Reinforcements
by Driven by Apathy
Summary: The Lifestream is everywhere where there are living things. But on the far away worlds of Gran Pulse and Cocoon its flow is constricted, frozen in the crystalline grip of the fal'Cie. This just won't do. It's time to send some reinforcements.
1. To Absent Friends

_**AN: **This is a crossover between Final Fantasy VII and XIII partially written out of boredom/procrastination of more important things, and partially because I recently caught a Final Fantasy bug after reading VarianN's "Terrorism & Anarchy". The idea at its core is one for a complete story, but I guess we'll see if my motivation lasts long enough to actually finish it. I guess if people tell me that it's worth continuing I probably will._

_Anyway. Central characters will be Cloud Strife and Lightning. Only the original FFXIII will be considered canon for the purpose of this story, FF XIII-II will be ignored._

* * *

"Is that him?"

"Yeah, I think so."

"Of course that's him, you idiots. Can't you see the sword?"

"Do you think he'd mind if I asked for an autograph? I've always wanted..."

Selectively ignoring the excited whispers only his sharper than normal hearing allowed him to pick up, Cloud marched on. It was a bright and sunny day at WRO headquarters. So unlike the regular dust storms that still frequently plagued Edge, and so unlike his mood.

Today was the anniversary. It had been three years now since the day everything went wrong.

Though if he really thought about it, things had started to go wrong long before that.

He really should have gotten used to the effects of his ridiculously exaggerated reputation by now. As he was making his way to Reeve Tuesti's office, awed stares and worshipful expressions following him wherever he went, he couldn't help but find some grim amusement in how the rest of the world saw him compared to how he saw himself.

Cloud Strife, the man who saved the world. Cloud Strife, who defeated the infamous Sephiroth not once, but _three_ times. Cloud Strife, who somehow found a cure for Geostigma. Cloud Strife, who stopped Omega Weapon almost on his own. Cloud Strife, the _hero_.

Not so. In truth, he was Cloud Strife who failed to stop Sephiroth before the worst of the damage was done. Cloud Strife, who had delivered the Black Materia straight into the madman's hands before that. Cloud Strife, who had to be bailed out by a dead friend in the afterlife whom he'd failed to protect, Cloud Strife who had in fact already all but surrendered to Geostigma. Cloud Strife, the... well, he did stop Omega Weapon, he guessed. And more importantly, he had promised not to blame himself.

But the sheer discrepancy between legend and reality was hilarious in its own way. Even though he couldn't laugh.

When he entered his friend's office, Reeve was already waiting for him. Two shot glasses, and a bottle of hard liquor had been prepared on his desk.

"You're early. Take a seat."

Cloud merely shrugged in response and did so.

"What did they say?" asked Reeve.

"They said... apparently I'm turning into a Cetra." the statement still sounded just as absurd coming from his own lips as it had sounded when he'd first heard it.

"Wait... a Cetra? How is that even possible?" Reeve's thoughts on the issue seemed to mirror his own.

Cloud shrugged – again – and responded. "Beats me. But apparently it's possible. The way Bugenhagen explained it, Cetra aren't actually genetically different from normal humans. Something about parts of the genome that are present in humans, but inactive. Except now they aren't."

"So..." asked Reeve, frowning, "what does this mean?"

"Nothing much, I think. Bugenhagen said the process was very slow. I doubt I'll be getting any detailed visions from the planet anytime soon, if ever."

"I see." Reeve replied after a moment of thought. "Well, it's good news in any case. At least now we can be sure that Sephiroth is really gone for good. And good riddance."

Cloud nodded. He could certainly agree with _that_ sentiment.

"So, are you going?" When he only received a confused look in response, Reeve elaborated. "To the place you said the voices are calling you to. If it's really the planet you're hearing, and not Sephiroth or Jenova, it would seem it's not a trap after all."

"I don't know yet." Cloud answered, looking pensive. "If I'm not mistaking what they're saying, I'm needed there. But I don't really understand why."

"You said there was also a warning there. A sense of danger, and the possibility that it might be impossible to find your way back."

"Yeah."

There was a moment of mildly uncomfortable silence.

"Whatever you decide to do Cloud, and I know you don't have much keeping you here, I wanted to say... thanks for everything."

"I didn't do much. The one who found the cure for Geostigma was..."

"Aerith, I know." Reeve cut him off. "And as usual, you're far to harsh with yourself, imagining you have some duty to fix _everything_. You've done much more than can be expected of anyone already. And if you decide to stay after all, and if you ever find you've had enough of solitude, you know the WRO will always have a place open for you."

"Thanks." was the only reply. But at least Cloud wasn't looking quite as depressed anymore as he usually did on this day.

Again, silence.

"It's been three years." Reeve said after a while, addressing the real reason why Cloud was here today, as he'd been for the last two years. It was a little theatrical, and neither of them remembered how exactly this little ceremony of theirs had started (alcohol had been involved, presumably), but the year after the first they'd still found themselves doing the same thing again. Apparently this year was to be no different.

Reeve opened the liquor bottle and carefully filled the glasses, handing one to Cloud. As he did so, his gaze wandered over the drawer where he kept the old remote control for Cait Sith. After the second Cait Sith had been destroyed, he'd never constructed another one. It just didn't seem right.

"To absent friends." said Cloud, and raised his glass.

"To absent friends. May they find their Promised Land."

Then the last two survivors of the group that had stopped Sephiroth and Meteorfall emptied their glasses and remembered.

* * *

Two weeks later, Cloud was standing at the edge of what was left of North Crater, ready to make the descent. He couldn't quite explain why he was doing this, perhaps simple curiosity was all it really was, but he guessed Reeve had been right – he really didn't have anything to sufficiently tie him down here. The possibility of death and/or no way back that the planet whispered of didn't bother him nearly as much as it should have.

Still, he didn't like the fact that he had to return to this particular place to find whatever the planet wanted to show him one bit.

Fusion sword on his back, taking care not to damage the heavy cloak protecting him against the cold, he began the long climb downwards.

It was the first day, and in a place far, far away, two seemingly lifeless crystal statues awoke from stasis to once again return to awareness and the harsh life of a l'Cie.


	2. A Glimpse of the Maker

The transition was so fast and sudden he didn't even notice when it happened.

One moment Cloud had been wandering through the caves and feeling faintly annoyed at coming all the way here and finding a grand total of nothing. The next thing he knew he'd turned around to go back, only to find that _this was not the tunnel through which he had entered_. Instead he was now looking at a corridor in what appeared to be some kind of reinforced underground bunker. Lot's of metal, walls painted in bright colors, and small white light emitting diodes for illumination. Most of them seemed to be broken or inactive though. The whole place looked like it used to have a bright and friendly here-comes-the-future look to it, except for the fact that it was half-buried under the dust of centuries. Many centuries.

There had been no fancy light show, no sound effects, no portal transporting him to wherever the planet wanted him to go. He'd just been _there_, and now he was _here_, and only the planet knew just where precisely here was.

And more importantly, he noticed, the weight of the Fusion Sword on his back was gone. As was the sword itself. And there was absolutely nothing to indicate where it might have gone.

Needless to say, he cursed up a storm. Well, at least he still had his Materi...

Correction. He still had _some_ of his Materia. All his Summon Materia appeared to have mysteriously vanished.

For a brief moment he felt the need to ascertain that no kleptomaniac ninja were hiding in the shadows.

Then he started walking. What else was there to do?

Ambling through old buildings in search of something (in this case, an exit) was nothing new to him. Neither was being on his own, with no support, and dangers potentially lurking behind every corner. The fact that he wasn't as well armed as he'd have liked bothered him though. The fact that he had no idea just where he was or where he was going bothered him more.

Ever since that near-instant transition, something was different. He'd never realized it before, but apparently he really _could_ feel the planet's presence somehow. Or had been able to before, at least. He'd never consciously noticed that certain something at the back on his mind. Not until the moment he'd arrived here, when it had suddenly and inexplicably vanished. Just like his sword.

Cloud kept walking. This place had definitely been a military installation of some sort. He'd come across some sort of armory (cleared of weapons, unfortunately), the doors were unlocked but reinforced, and the whole thing just had a certain feel to it that he could only faintly recall from his days in the Shinra Infantry.

And apparently it had simply been abandoned. No signs of fighting, no battle damage of any sort, no indication at all that the people who must have worked here once were in any particular hurry when they left.

No monsters either. Cloud wasn't quite sure whether he liked that or not. On one hand it meant he wouldn't have to fight while unarmed. On the other hand the sudden loss of the Fusion Sword really stung. Bashing in some hapless Guard Hound's snout might have felt really cathartic right now. But no unlucky Guard Hound materialized, nor did his sword reappear.

Eventually he reached what appeared to be some kind of armored door. It was big, and Cloud got the impression that whatever lay behind it must have been important. Well, he might as well take a look.

Whatever he had been expecting, it wasn't the... _thing_ he found in the large oval room as he entered. It was the size of a house, halfway embedded in the ground, and shaped like an octagonal prism. And on each side there was something like a large crystal eye. An eye which Cloud could have sworn was looking straight at him. But that was stupid. This thing was not alive.

He felt a sharp prickling at his neck. A sensation he was very familiar with by now. It always meant the same thing.

And then the security bots emerged from a gap in the wall and there was no more time for thinking. Cloud dodged the aim of the first bot while he closed the distance, came in fast from the side and ripped the mechanical arm holding the gun straight off at the bearing. Using the disarmed bot as a shield he charged within grappling distance of the remaining two bots. It was over very quickly. From the corner of his eye, Cloud could see the crystal eyes on the object in the center of the room flashing brightly. He turned around...

And then there was a world of light, a giant of gold and marble in the distance, and the sound of bells and pipe organs.

When he finally regained some semblance of spatial orientation he was lying on the floor, gasping for air while surreal images flashed before his eyes and an excruciating pain burned between his shoulder blades.

* * *

Machai awoke.

Was it time already? Had the plan been enacted? If so, he could not tell.

No. That wasn't it. The disturbance that had torn him from his deep sleep was something different. Something or someone was inside. That was not supposed to happen.

He felt the intruder nearing. What had gone wrong? This whole compound should have been sealed. Humans should know better than to come here.

Yet this one appeared ignorant of how things were meant to be. The situation was dangerous. He could already feel the central directive of his own existence calling out to him.

Barthandelus would not be pleased.

The sovereign of Cocoon's fal'Cie and his co-conspirators had told him just enough to ensure his cooperation, and just little enough to allow him to remain inactive and isolate himself. He had gladly agreed. He would probably have agreed to just about anything. Everything to be free of this fate. A thousand years of isolation were nothing if it meant achieving their goal.

But he was what he was. And his nature, his purpose, his _focus_ could not be denied.

He needed to act quickly while he could still do so freely. A thought aimed at one of the few systems remaining under his control, and three security bots went active to eliminate the intruder before it was too late.

But the bots never stood a chance. The intruder dealt with them seemingly within the blink of an eye. A warrior then. One of the highest caliber at that. Suitable for the task, perfect even. There was no choice. His focus demanded action.

He acted.

As the fal'Cie Machai chose the ignorant human for the honor of receiving the brand he both envied and hated him in equal measure. Envied, for the undeserving creature was about to be granted a glimpse of the Maker, something for which Machai would have sacrificed nearly everything. Hated, for the repercussions of this very event might well rob Machai himself of the chance to ever see that Maker again.

Curiously enough the human remained conscious throughout the entire process. There was not doubt in the fal'Cie's mind that this was just another sign of how dangerous this newest l'Cie might be. But he was powerless to destroy this particular danger, no matter how much he might wish to. All he could do was activate his communication systems, systems which had not been used in centuries, and send a message to Eden to warn the others of this new threat to their plans.

Barthandelus would not be pleased indeed.


	3. Counterproductive Sadism

"Luh What?"

"L'Cie. You're a l'Cie, a chosen of the Cocoon fal'Cie. You should be proud. There has not been a Cocoon l'Cie in centuries."

The Colonel had arrived with a squad of soldiers in some kind of gunship shortly after Cloud had finally found the exit from the subterranean complex inside which he'd been lost earlier. Stepping outside from the dark underground bunker only to find that he was still inside what appeared to be _a hollow planet _had been quite a shock.

He'd briefly considered refusing to come along – squads of soldiers trying to take you to an unknown location were bad news in his experience – but he really needed some information, and it didn't appear that there was a settlement nearby. So when the woman who was obviously in charge had promised him an explanation he had agreed to accompany them. Now he was inside some military base in a futuristic floating city that would have impressed even the designers of Midgar itself. Apparently the place was called Eden, and was the capital of this strange inside out planet.

Lieutenant Colonel Jhil Nabaat, as she had introduced herself, had long pale blond hair, bright green eyes, the symmetrical features of a classical beauty, and an easy smile that nevertheless seemed slightly artificial somehow.

"A l'Cie, as you should know, is a human being who receives the brand of the fal'Cie as well as, according to the legends, incredible magical power, in exchange for accomplishing a specific task. Are you sure you don't remember anything?"

"No. Just my name, and not much else."

Amnesia was a really clichéd excuse for why he didn't know anything about this place, but hey: If it's stupid, but works...

"That's very unfortunate." Nabaat said. "I had hoped you might know something that would help us figure out your focus. Did you not have a vision or something similar when you became a l'Cie? According to all the legends, that is how it usually works."

"I might have seen... something. But I can't make sense of it." That was no lie. The images Cloud had seen while the brand etched itself onto his back were confused and incoherent. Just about all he'd been able to discern was an odd vaguely cross-shaped... building? Sculpture? Cloud really wasn't sure what it was supposed to be.

"I see. Very well. I have prepared a summary of all we know about the l'Cie for you. Feel free to read it, or use the computer to look up anything else that might interest you. I need to give my report to Primarch Dysley now, but I'm sure we will be able to talk more tomorrow. Have a pleasant evening, Mr. Strife."

A pleasant evening, she said. What a joke. As Cloud read through the information on just what it meant to be a l'Cie, and what fate was waiting for l'Cie who didn't fulfill their focus, his evening quickly became anything but pleasant. He kept reading until late into the night, first about the l'Cie, then about the fal'Cie, then about Cocoon in general and anything else that caught his eye. He guessed this world as a whole wasn't in too bad a condition, even if the constant rehearsals in books, news reports and encyclopedia articles about how Gran Pulse was the enemy of Cocoon and the source of all evil in general were ever so slightly disturbing. It was a pity that his own situation didn't reflect this state of affairs. No, his life had sucked before, and there was every indication that it was going to suck even more in the future.

Why in the world had the planet wanted to send him here? Did the universe really hate him _this_ much?

It was the second day, and in a place not so far away anymore, a young man finally met his beloved's dear sister. She hated him from the very first second.

* * *

"Nothing then?" the Primarch's severe voice practically radiated gravitas as he spoke.

"No, your Eminence. He keeps claiming that he does not remember anything. So far we have found nothing to imply that he is lying. His identity also remains unknown. We have not found him in any of our records and no one from the vicinity of Gelbrata base has gone missing recently. We know nothing about him at all, except for his name." Nabaat was getting visibly frustrated. A nobody like that, and she couldn't figure him out? It was preposterous.

"Cloud Strife. If that is indeed his real name."

"Yes, your Eminence. Your Eminence, if I might suggest, there are many ways to put pressure on a subject without inflicting physical damage. If I were allowed to..."

"Not yet, Jihl. Not yet. As long as he makes no attempts to leave the base, you will stay polite and give him every possible reason to cooperate. Continue to attempt to discern his focus. Continue to gain his trust. And if you discover anything, anything at all, inform me immediately. You are dismissed."

"Of course, you're Eminence." Lieutenant Colonel Jihl Nabaat bowed deeply, and then severed the video link.

She was a useful tool, Barthandelus reflected. Useful enough to put up with her disgusting habit of inflicting psychological torture on others of her kind for her own perverse pleasure. Not that Barthandelus cared, but it still was... unsanitary.

Humans. Never had there been a more undeserving creature to hold the Maker's favor. He couldn't wait to finally be able to shed this disgustingly fleshy disguise.

Cloud Strife was a possible stumbling block in his plans, but only a minor one. At the current moment, the risks of trying to deal with him for good and possibly raising inconvenient questions in the minds of the more intelligent members of the military clearly outweighed the risks of simply letting him be. As long as the boy didn't know his focus, he was no danger. He would simply remain in Eden until he either succumbed to despair and became a Cie'th or until the great plan would be completed, whichever came first.

Probably the later, Barthandelus admitted to himself. As limited as humans might be, they were strong in their own way. It had taken centuries of social engineering and cultural manipulation until the idea that the fate of a l'Cie was truly inevitable had been sufficiently anchored in the human collective subconscious. Before that, the vast majority of l'Cie had always, _always_ rebelled against their fate eventually, and far too many had succeeded. It had taken yet centuries more to deal with those individuals and erase all memory of their existence from history.

But none of that mattered right now. Strife was safely locked away in the heart of Eden, surrounded by thousands of troops to guard him, and he didn't even realize that he was a prisoner in all but name.

What could possibly go wrong? Jihl was his pet down to the very core of her being, groomed nearly from infancy to be utterly loyal to him. She would follow his orders to the letter, and Strife would never suspect a thing.

* * *

Cloud felt like wrecking a wall or two out of sheer frustration. He couldn't walk two meters without guards falling into step besides him. These people were treating him like a prison inmate, and they didn't even have the decency to admit it!

He carefully kept his expression even and pretended not to notice, just as he had for the last four days. Nabaat might think herself subtle, but it was clear that the woman was the one ultimately responsible. She was clearly trying to make him as uncomfortable as possible without having to openly drop her act as a diligent hostess just doing her best to be helpful.

Someone less experienced with this kind of thing might not have noticed what she was doing, but Cloud was not most people. This was exactly the kind of shit the Turks might have attempted back home – before he'd wiped most of them out, that was.

Sadly, that was not an option here. Nevertheless, he was still angry at himself for not seeing through the Lieutenant Colonel's pleasant facade sooner. The woman clearly enjoyed tormenting others.

At least he'd finally managed to arm himself, claiming a simple but sturdy two-handed broadsword from the armory. It was a rather flimsy thing by his standards, but it would do for now. He'd been denied any more advanced equipment, his constant shadows in the PSICOM uniforms citing "regulations" as the reason.

Still, when he'd picked up the old blade that just happened to be the largest weapon available in the armory from among all the high-tech transforming gunblades, submachine guns and assault rifles, no one had protested. The old thing probably hadn't seen use in a century anyway, and after all, what damage could one man do armed with nothing but an ordinary sword?

Keeping the sword out of his hands had apparently not been judged important enough to endanger the illusion that he was a honored guest. Poor clueless idiots.

He'd also made some progress in understanding the magical abilities his being a l'Cie supposedly blessed him with. As far as he'd been able to figure out, the brand did not actually grant him any magic that wasn't already intrinsic to his own being before, however it did act as a catalyst for his personal magical reserves. He could now manipulate his magical energy entirely without Materia use, and in ways that would not even have occurred to him before.

Theoretically, he should even be capable of evoking effects that no particular Materia existed for. Now add into the equation the sheer amount of magical force he had at his disposal, thanks to inhuman mako levels and years of constant high intensity magic use, and... well, he found that he was actually looking forward to experimenting. It should be interesting.

But for now, his days were filled with reading his way through Eden's computer network and various encyclopedia, as well as repressing the apparent fact that he was currently living on borrowed time. He still had only the smallest of hints at what his focus might be, nothing but the brief vision of that strange cross-shaped sculpture. But if he were to just browse through enough information, surely sooner or later he would find some piece of trivia that would lead him to his goal. Or at least he hoped so.

He was so deeply absorbed in his thoughts, he barely noticed the little child accompanying Jihl Nabaat before the boy spoke.

"But I don't want to do another test! I want my daddy!"

The Lieutenant Colonel gave one of her insincere chuckles that Cloud had come to loathe the sound of during the last few days and responded. "Just a little patience, Dajh. You will see your daddy again soon. I've already sent someone to get him."

What was a child doing here? The boy grumbled a bit about not getting to see his daddy immediately, but then feel silent. But before Nabaat could say anything more, the boy's eyes met Cloud's.

"Huh? Who're you?" he asked with eyes that looked so innocent it was downright uncanny.

"Cloud." He answered. He'd never been very good at small talk.

"Have you seen my daddy? He's about this big..." the boy indicated an adult's size with his small hands, "and he has hair just like mine." What was a child doing here?

"Sorry kid. I haven't seen him."

The boy looked disappointed, and was quickly led away by Lieutenant Colonel Nabaat. "Pardon us, Mr. Strife." she told him as they turned to leave. "I'm sure Dajh here didn't mean to disturb you. I was just showing him to his new home here in Eden. Can you imagine, little Dajh here is a Cocoon l'Cie, just like you! Nothing but legends for centuries, and now we find two genuine l'Cie in as many weeks. Amazing."

The kid... was a l'Cie?

A little boy like that? How old was he, five, six, maybe seven? How could a child like him possibly be expected to fulfill some crucial and dangerous task as his focus at this age? It was bad enough that _he_ had to live with this constant threat hanging over his life, but to inflict that on a little child...

It was just too cruel.

It was the seventh day, and on this day another unfortunate soul would finally confess to her lover that she had been branded with the mark of a l'Cie. But hers was a different shape from the ones that could be found on Cloud's and Dajh's skin.


	4. Fireworks

Three more days, and nothing to show for it. It was maddening.

He must have rifled through half of Eden's combined libraries in search of some kind of clue by now. But it appeared there simply wasn't anything helpful for him to find.

But there was good news too. Somehow the memory of the vision showing him his focus was becoming clearer in his mind, not fuzzier as he'd have expected to be the case with a normal memory. More importantly, he could finally feel the planet again - or its local Lifestream equivalent anyway. It felt... stale, somehow. Lifeless, distant, like something locked away behind thick glass. You could see it, but you couldn't touch.

It wasn't at all what he would have expected the lifestream of a world as full of healthy natural environments and lush landscapes as Cocoon apparently was to feel like. But even so, having that familiar presence back again, even if was distant and silent, was still a comfort of a sort.

He wished Aerith was here. She'd have been able to tell him so much more about what was going on, he was sure of it. He might have a handful of activated Cetra genes, but that was clearly a poor substitute for having been born a Cetra and growing up as one. Heck, even dead she was still better at this than he was!

All _he _could discern from the Lifestream's whispers was... well, nothing, essentially. He just knew that it was important for him to find that odd structure he had seen in his vision, and it wasn't just because it had something to do with his focus.

He sighed, and switched of the computer. There was no point in doing this any longer, he needed to change his approach. And he had just the slightest suspicion that Lt. Colonel Nabaat wouldn't just nod and wish him good luck if he told her that he was leaving. The fact that there were currently two heavily built soldiers in full combat gear looking over his shoulder certainly implied that much. Along with many, many other little things he'd been forced to tolerate for the last few days.

Which left two options: Option one, find some bullshit excuse that coincided with Nabaat's agenda, whatever that was, or option two, bash some heads.

He knew which one he'd find more satisfying, even if it was the more dangerous one. For the last two days, his 'custodian' had taken to waking him from his sleep at random hours during the night, ostensibly 'to try and induce a spontaneous-subconscious reaction, that might tell us more about your focus'. Yeah, right.

If Nabaat tried to pull that crap one more time, she'd find herself confronted with the spontaneous-subconscious reaction of his fist in her face!

Breathing deeply, Cloud considered his next step. If he was choosing option number two it would probably be best to do it late in the evening or at night, when there were as few people as possible around. Which left him with an entire day, and nothing to do.

Might as well look around for a little while then. Who knew, maybe he'd find something to make option one more viable?

A few hours later, and he'd gotten something to eat in the cafeteria, finally taken a walk around the facility, and absorbed at least a few of the admittedly imposing sights this flying city offered – even if it was through windows made of thick bulletproof glass.

But he had come no closer to finding a solution to his problem. Not that he'd expected otherwise. The crucial detail he had missed _just running into him_ while he was strolling around aimlessly – just how improbable was that?

"Fireworks!" shouted the obviously excited boy and nearly crashed into Cloud as he run through the corridor. He would have, if it hadn't been for the fact that Cloud sidestepped at the last moment.

"I'm sorry for that. I'm afraid Dajh can be a little excitable sometimes." said a man wearing a long olive coat over khaki trousers, whose distinctive hair and skin color betrayed his identity. This must be Dajh's father then. Good. If he'd been reunited with his son, then at least _something_ must have gone right somewhere.

"It's alright. I don't mind."

"Of course. Thank you." said the man with a slight nod, and made to follow his son.

"Where are you going?"

The question had left his mouth before Cloud had time to think about it. Why was it important? It wasn't any of his business, so why did he feel the need to ask a total stranger about something that didn't really matter to him?

"Bodhum." answered the man in the coat. "Dajh wants to see the fireworks festival there, and Colonel Nabaat was kind enough to allow it."

Colonel Nabaat allowing a child to go visit a fireworks display out of kindness? That seemed slightly out of character for her, to say the least. Cloud tried to formulate a question about it, but by the time he'd decided what he wanted to say the other man had already left.

Ah, well. It probably wasn't important anyway.

It was only later in the evening, when he'd looked up the Bodhum fireworks festival in the computer network on a whim that Cloud understood _why_ the issue had felt important. There, clear as day on the computer screen, was a picture of the strange, vaguely cross-shaped construction he had seen in his vision. The 'Pulse Vestige'.

Had the two burly guards standing behind him stood in front of him instead, they would have seen the expression on his face, and might have gotten some inkling of a warning of the things to come.

It was a fierce little smile that spoke of satisfaction at finally having a goal to aim for, well-founded confidence in his ability to achieve that goal, and just a hint of a certain something that was hard to define precisely, but promised pain to everyone stupid enough to try and stop him.

Cloud had some frustrations to work through after all.

* * *

The ringing of her mobile phone rudely interrupted Jihl Nabaat right when she was in the middle of her masterful (in her own mind, at least) 'kind-young-woman-who-likes-kids' act while pretending to watch the Katzroys having a sweet father-son bonding moment watching the fireworks.

Hiding her annoyance, she flipped the device open. It was Captain Viot. Why was that buffon calling her? Hadn't her directives been clear enough? Wake Strife three times this night, report on his reactions when she returned tomorrow.

Oh! Right. Strife must have let something slip. Finally. Now she would be able to crack this annoying little mystery. The Primarch might have forbidden the use of outright psychological torture, but she still had her little tricks. That man had mocked her long enough with his unflappable refusal to show any kind of reaction to her provocations. She felt her mood improve considerably.

"Lt. Colonel Nabaat here. What do you have to report, Captain?"

She listened to what he had to say. The news was not what she had been hoping for, and her mood quickly worsened past the point where it had been before.

"**WHAT? WHAT DO YOU MEAN, HE'S GONE?"**

She barely caught herself before further trying to shout off the man's ear through the phone. She was attracting enough stares as it was. She forced herself to take control of her voice.

"Alright, Vito. Now tell me what's going on, and I hope you have a good explanation!"

"Yes, Ma'am. When I entered Mr. Strife's room five minutes ago at 1:00 AM as per your orders, he was not there." the man paused, as if unsure how to say what came next. "It looks like he left through the air ducts."

"The air ducts? How in the name of everything that is unholy on Pulse could he have gotten through the grate? They're made of fal'Cie steel in that area of the base! You can't just make a hole in that!"

"I don't know! But the hole is there, and there's no trace of Strife. I've got people looking for him, but so far they haven't reported back."

"Well, if he isn't in his room, find him! Haven't I been clear on this, he's not to leave the base, under any circumstances! That's a directive from the Primarch himself, Vito. If Strife escapes, it will be your head." Well, no, actually it was far more likely that it would be _her_ head the blame would be placed on, but the Captain didn't need to know that.

"Of course, Ma'am. Don't worry, he won't be able to leave. He'd have to get past at least three checkpoints to get outside."

"Good. I'll return immediately. See that you have him tied up and prepared for interrogation by the time I'm back. I'm done playing around with that man!"

Captain Vito let out a heavy breath when he heard the telltale click of the Lt. Colonel hanging up. This was just great... why was this Strife guy so important anyway? And was there any way this shift could possibly get any worse?

"Sir!" one of his subordinates choose just that moment to interrupt his line of thought. "I just got an update from Central Base Security Control. They say they've lost contact with Checkpoint Gamma Five!"

* * *

_**AN:** If some of you are wondering about why the last sentence of chapter 3 changed slightly, I noticed that I had a small continuity error in there. Serah became a l'Cie on day 2, not day 6 or day 7. She just told Snow about it on day 7._

_Oh, and as general thing: Don't be afraid to point out any errors in grammar or spelling I might make, point out odd wording (I'm not a native speaker of English, so that happens sometimes) or give some constructive criticism in general. I certainly don't mind, in fact I would really appreciate it.  
_


	5. Fireworks of a different Kind

_**AN:** There's going to be a fair bit of action in this chapter. If you like listening to music while reading, and if you have access to it, I recommend J-E-N-O-V-A from the Advent Children soundtrack for this._

* * *

It was a bad night to be a guard at PSICOM Headquarters.

The air ducts had brought him this far, but apparently the designers of this building hadn't been _completely_ blind to the possibility of infiltration through the ventilation system. Or at least not to the same extent as whoever drew up the plans for Shinra headquarters. The system was completely isolated from the outer areas of the base.

Could slipped out of the duct as quietly as possible. There was a checkpoint up ahead, and no reason to cause an alarm if it could be avoided. As frustrated as he was with the events of the last week, he still didn't quite want to cause a massacre just because he could.

He would have preferred to simply put the guards to sleep with a Sleep-All spell combination. Unfortunately that option was unavailable to him without an All materia. And while he had a Master Magic materia available slotted in his armor right next to W-Magic, without multiple targeting it was unlikely he'd be able to put all the guards to sleep before somebody got off a report.

With the elegant way of doing things out of his reach, he decided to do the next best thing, as per the rules of the Aerith Gainsborough 'infiltration for dummies' gambit: When in doubt, seek refuge in audacity.

So rather than trying to sneak by the guards or attacking on sight, Cloud just marched nonchalantly right up to them.

"Hello." he greeted in a quiet but friendly tone.

"Er..." Quite obviously the sergeant in charge didn't really know what to make of him. Good.

"Could you please open the door for me? I feel like taking a walk."

"I'm sorry, sir. We were told not to let you leave the inner part of the base without a proper escort. It isn't safe."

"Oh." Cloud said, as if that was something he truly hadn't considered until just now. "Then perhaps you could escort me outside?"

"No sir, I'm afraid we are not allowed to leave our post." As expected.

"Oh, I see. That's understandable. Well, thank you anyway." Cloud responded amicably as he moved past the Sergeant and went to push the button that would open the door himself before moving on.

For a brief moment he wondered if he might actually get away with it. Then the Sergeant blocked his path, and two more soldiers took position at his sides, their hands noticeably closer to their weapons than before. It looked like they _did_ have explicit orders after all regarding what to do if he didn't give in to subtle pressure as he always had before. Cloud sighed.

"Now listen here, buddy, I told you you were not to leave..."

That was a pity.

"...the ba-"

The sergeant never got to finish that sentence, as Cloud's fist robbed him of his consciousness and replaced it with a moderate to severe case of brain trauma instead.

For a precious second, the other guards just stood frozen, their minds not having caught up yet to what had just happened. By the time they had, the two guards to the left and right of Cloud were unconscious too.

Guard number three and guard number four had just enough time to reach for their guns before they violently collided with a wall and crumpled on the floor with a few broken rips, respectively.

Not a single shot fell.

That had been easy. He'd even been able to afford holding back to this extent to avoid causing any real damage. Whoever was in charge of security was obviously unaware of his true capabilities. Well, he couldn't count on that advantage lasting for very much longer. There was no more sense in trying to do this on the sly.

He unceremoniously kicked in the metal door instead of bothering to open it the conventional way - more for the experience of kicking in the door than for any practical reason - and began to run.

Not a minute later, alarms were wailing all over the entire base.

* * *

"Sir, we just got the most recent update. It's been confirmed that all the guards at Checkpoint Gamma Five have been rendered unconscious."

"Damn! How did he do it, sleeping gas? Do we know which path he's taking?" Captain Vito asked his subordinate. This whole situation was a mess. Strife didn't have much of a chance of escape, surrounded by half of PSICOM's infantry force as he was, but they had to capture him alive. That always made things difficult.

"No Sir. He doesn't have many options from here on. He could try to vanish back into the air ducts, but then he'd move at a crawl, and we'd have the entire base mobilized long before he escaped. And the ventilation systems for the inner, middle, and outer rings are all independent of each other."

"What about a disguise? We know he got at least a few of our people by surprise, he could have acquired a combat suit for himself." the Captain pondered..

"I considered that, Sir. It won't work, all out men and women have orders to check the identity of everyone who tries to get through one of the checkpoints."

"Excellent work, Lieutenant! He has no way out now!" Vito sounded pleased. The young Lieutenant in question virtually beamed with pride at his superior's praise, when another member of the command crew shouted out a new message.

"Checkpoint Beta Six reports they're under attack! I repeat: Checkpoint Beta Six under attack!"

Strife was openly attacking their forces? That was unexpected, and bold, to say the least. "Orders for Checkpoint Beta Six! Subdue and capture the escapee. Don't let him get away, and don't kill him!"

* * *

"...subdue and capture. I repeat: You are to subdue and capture. Checkpoint Beta Six, do you copy?"

Cloud snorted softly as he listened to the voice from the stolen radio while he kept running. He wondered how long it would take them to realize that Checkpoint Beta Six had been unavailable for some time now.

It had been a bit bloodier this time, but the fallen guards would survive. Probably.

He was encountering more and more PSICOM personnel hurrying to their posts now. They never had time to do much more than blink in surprise, but it was obvious that the entire base was mobilizing. His original plan had been to escape into the city, lay low for a bit, and then steal a vehicle. That might not be quite as feasible as he had hoped anymore.

Time to switch to plan B then. He abruptly changed direction, heading for the closest elevator shaft.

Checkpoint Alpha Twenty-Seven appeared to have received some measure of warning about what they were dealing with, and this time when it was all over he'd had to deflect a few bullets with his sword and one of the downed guards was missing the lower part of his left arm.

One kicked in door later he finally felt the wind blowing through his hair. Quite a strong wind too. Three gunships were parked in their assigned landing zones, but he'd learned enough over the last few days to know that without the right codes he wouldn't be able to use them.

He looked down at the city below him, up at Cocoon's inner surface above him, carefully judged distance and angle, and jumped.

* * *

"The Landing Zone?" Why would Strife try to escape via the landing zone? That was nearly seventy meters above all the exits. Was Strife hoping to hijack one of the craft there? Must be.

Well, without the codes he wouldn't succeed. And if he had somehow gotten his hands on the codes, he would be gone by now. Since none of the gunships had taken off yet...

"Yes Sir." His subordinate replied. "Considering how dangerous the man appears to be, I've sent directives not to approach the area with anything less than platoon-strength. I know it might seem excessively cautious, but..."

"No." Captain Vito interrupted, "you were right to do so."

The Lieutenant just nodded. There was a general atmosphere of shock and disbelief inside PSICOM Headquarters Command Center. One man had seemingly effortlessly torn his way through what was supposed to be one of, if not _the_ most secure facility on all of Cocoon. Not by cunning or intrigue, no, that would have been _reasonable_, but by way of a frontal assault against anyone and anything unfortunate enough to be standing in his way.

Three checkpoints that had been overwhelmed in about as many minutes. No deaths yet, thankfully, but at least two dozen injuries, ranging from moderate to life-threatening. Then the intruder had entered an elevator, and rather than using it he had cut his way through its roof, vanished from the area covered by the surveillance cameras into the elevator shaft, and then emerged at the highest level of the base not twenty seconds later, with absolutely no explanation as to how he'd gotten there, except for the utterly daft implication that he might have jumped.

Damn. Just... _damn_.

Captain Vito had known the legends, of course, had intellectually understood that l'Cie were supposed to be really powerful, but this was unlike anything he could ever have predicted.

"Sir, I've got Lt. Captain Merters on the radio. They're going in now."

The PSICOM headquarters command crew seemed to be collectively holding their breath as they waited, tension hanging thick in the air while they stared at the moving images on their computer screens and listened to the sounds coming from their headsets.

Any moment now. Any moment there would be the first surprised shout, followed by the sudden realization that half the squad was already down, gunshots, and frantic calls for reinforcements. Just as it had been with Checkpoint Alpha Twenty-Seven, and would have been with Checkpoints Beta Six and Gamma Five, if they had lasted long enough.

But no such thing happened. PSICOM's soldiers swarmed out all over the landing zone, quickly and efficiently, interlocking fields of fire covering each other. One minute passed. Then two. Then three, and finally it was no longer possible to deny that their quarry was long gone.

It was a few minutes later yet that someone suggested perhaps Strife might have jumped from the landing zone down to the streets below? True, the fall would surely have killed any ordinary person, but considering the blatantly superhuman attributes already displayed by Strife, was it really too bold to consider that he might be capable of such a stunt? Captain Vito ordered a search of PSICOM Headquarters' surroundings, and all the recordings from the exterior cameras analyzed.

He realized, of course, that his military career was essentially over. Still, the thought did not affect him as much as he would have expected. Perhaps he was still in shock?

The search remained fruitless, as he had known it would.

And then the camera footage arrived.

There it was, plain as day. With the focal point zoomed in, the image artificially brightened, and the resolution enhanced, he could see Strife sheathe his weapon, bend his knees, push off the ground with both legs, and shoot upward like a cannonball. The small human figure on the screen ascended twenty meters, forty meters, sixty, eighty... all the while loosing velocity as gravity pulled him back down to 'earth'.

Then he exceeded the range of Eden's artificial gravity field, and the trend suddenly reversed as Strife plummeted with increasing speed towards Cocoon's surface almost one-hundred and fifty kilometers away in the direction that was now 'downwards' for him.

It was at this point that Captain Vito finally broke down into hysterical laughter. None of the other PSICOM officers present blamed him much.

It was day twelve, and in a few more hours a young woman in the seaside city of Bodhum would rise, to soon experience her worst birthday ever. But for now, she merely slept the sleep of one who is always slightly on edge, and in a place that was now actually quite close, a man fell from the sky.

Thankfully, he did _not_ crash through her roof and land right in front of her, though if that _had_ happened it wouldn't have been an entirely unprecedented occurrence for him either.

* * *

_**AN:** One reviewer mentioned that Cloud seemed slightly too assertive. Maybe that's true, but I'd argue that it isn't. I recently watched one of the FF VII walkthroughs that can be found on Youtube, and I guess my interpretation of the character might have been influenced by his original portrayal over his more angsty, depressed self in Advent Children. I think I also read somewhere that one of Advent Children's makers said in some interview that depression is one of the major symptoms of Geostigma, so that might explain the discrepancy._

_I haven't forgotten about his depressive-angsty tendencies, and there will be some of that here too. But there's more to Cloud than that. Just as there's more to Lightning than the ever-stoic ice queen she's sometimes quite undeservedly described as – if you revisit some of the cutscenes from FF XIII, you will find that she clearly shows strong emotions as early as the 5th or 6th cutscene. She obviously doesn't like to express them where other people whom she isn't extremely close to can see it, but she definitely has them._

_Regarding what happened to the other members of Avalanche, there will be some tidbits about that in this story, and maybe a small prequel story someday._

_Last but not least, chapter sizes. I can't quite decide if I should stick to my current 1000-2500 words chapters, or if I should release larger chapters at a slower pace. What's the reviewers' opinion?_

* * *

_And now, time for some fridge logic. Only read this if you're in the mood for an idle thought experiment._

_Yes, yes, I know logic and Final Fantasy don't mix. But let's try anyway: Since Eden is located approximately in the center of Cocoon, and since the inner surface of Cocoon is always 'downwards' there, it would logically follow that Eden must have some kind of artificial gravity. And whatever generates that gravity probably doesn't extend too far away from the city. And if you managed to clear its area of effect – such as by jumping very, very high – you would then fall straight to the surface of Cocoon below._

_In bullet shaped position, the speed at which the aerodynamic drag negates any further acceleration by gravity for a human being in free fall is about 320 km/h. Assuming Cocoon has a radius of 140 km, it should take Cloud about 25 minutes to reach the surface. Add the general confusion of the situation, and the seeming implausibility of what he just did, and by the time anybody thought to scramble aircraft to intercept him it would already be far too late._

_Which leaves the tricky part of any fall: The landing. However, even that isn't as much of a problem as you might at first believe. Leaving the bullet shaped position, and maximizing aerodynamic drag, your speed will fall to about 190 km/h. Under just the right circumstances, hitting just the right surface, that's actually survivable for a normal human being. It takes optimal conditions though. Soft snow on a steep slope would be ideal (there's this case of a British airman who jumped out of his burning bomber without a parachute and fell for thousands of feet, only to survive almost unharmed with only a sprained knee), and failing that swampy loose soil is also good. There's probably not a lot of snowy slopes near Bodhum, but I'm sure there are some swamps to be found._

_And even if that's not the case, looking at the kind of accelerations both Cloud and Sephiroth sustain in their battle in Advent Children with literally no sign of even the slightest discomfort, it's pretty clear that they're anything but normal humans. Heck, even characters like Tifa, who haven't been enhanced by some kind of semi-mystical science, are clearly superhuman in their feats. I conclude that 'levels' result in a very real, very literal improvement of someone's physical abilities in the reality of Final Fantasy._

_In short, hitting any soft surface at merely the terminal velocity of a human being shouldn't be much of a problem for Cloud. Maybe somewhat uncomfortable, but far from life-threatening._


	6. A Chance Meeting

"Excuse me." "Sorry."

Those words were the only words spoken when they literally bumped into each other, wandering the streets of Bodhum, both too busy pondering their current problems to really watch where they were going. They didn't exactly violently collide, it was more of an accidental rubbing of shoulders when they passed each other.

Had they stopped for a moment and shared their thoughts, they might have found that each held the solution for the others' problem. Then, not even a full hour later, they'd have stormed the Pulse Vestige together. That would have been the beginning.

In the end, she would have saved her sister and he would have escaped his focus. Years later, when camaraderie had become friendship, and then friendship something more, they would joke about how different things might have been if not for two total strangers meeting in some freakishly improbable coincidence and deciding to ask for advice and then offering help with each other's personal problems.

Unfortunately they weren't telepathic, and they were both _way_ too introverted to ever consider spontaneously unburdening their hearts to somebody they'd only just met. So none of that happened.

Instead they both reflexively apologized, barely perceiving the other doing the same. Then they continued on their way, and quickly forgot about the whole thing.

And that was how Cloud Strife and Lightning Farron first met. Neither even looked at the others' face, and neither would later retain any memory of the incident.

* * *

Try as she might, Serah was nowhere to be found.

_Why didn't I believe her?_

When Serah had confessed to her about becoming a l'Cie, she had refused to accept it. She should have known better. Her sister rarely lied, and never about the big things. But it had been the easy way out. Easier to blame Snow for leading her astray. Easier to play it down as a childish deception than to face it.

Everything was better than to accept what had happened.

But it had happened, hadn't it? And now Serah believed that she had abandoned her, and would perhaps even turn on her if she knew the truth.

_'But don't forget. If you really are a l'Cie, it's my job to deal with you.'_

Lightning flinched. If Serah had been serious, if she'd really been turned into a l'Cie... just what must it have felt like to hear her say that? She felt an overwhelming urge to punch herself in the face for being such an utterly cruel bitch to her sister.

She might have gone through with it too, if it hadn't been for the fact that a woman punching herself in the face on the street would just look too damn silly. Lightning didn't do silly. Not anymore.

Clutching the survival knife Serah had wanted to give her as a birthday present in her pocket, she continued her search.

"Lightning!" It was Snow. He quickly led her into a small alley were there weren't so many people around.

"Snow? What are you doing here? Where's Serah?"

"The Vestige... we went to the Vestige, and..."

"The Vestige? You went to the Vestige? Are you _completely insane_?" Lightning questioned, her voice rising together with her anger. "There's a fal'Cie in there, you numbskull! How could you take Serah there?"

"I know! Listen, Serah's trapped inside, and..."

"What? How? Explain now! You damn imbecile! You..."

"We had to find out her focus! If we don't, she'll end up a Cie'th!" Lightning felt her stomach lurch at the mere mention of the possibility. No. Never! Not Serah!

Right. Breathe. Face facts. Serah was a l'Cie. It was no lie, it was the harsh unforgiving truth. Blaming Snow wouldn't help. She needed to figure out what to do, she needed to find some way to help her sister before it was too late.

Forcefully calming herself, Lightning spoke. "Alright. Did you discover her focus? Did she fulfill it?"

"No. We never made it that far. Serah's inside the Vestige, but the way is blocked, I couldn't follow her. Listen, I'm going to get the other guys from NORA, we can find a way inside together, and then..."

"I'm going on my own." the decision was made before he finished speaking. She couldn't afford to let Snow or anyone else slow her down. Not for this. Serah was too important.

She'd throw away everything, she'd betray the Guardian Corps and the Sanctum if that was what it took, but she would _not _fail Serah.

* * *

Just what was going on in this town?

He'd missed his target by two dozen kilometers or so. Not a problem, it just meant he needed to walk for a bit and swim across the shallow waters of this sea for a while. The local wildlife, while sometimes aggressive, was hardly worth mentioning as a threat. He'd even managed to slip in a few hours of sleep after finding some cover by climbing a tree.

That, it appeared, had been a mistake. If he'd arrived in Bodhum sooner, he might have avoided this whole mess. But hindsight is 20/20, as they say.

Bodhum was swarming with soldiers. Mostly PSICOM soldiers at that, not just the local Guardian Corps. For a moment he thought they had somehow figured out his destination. But fortunately they didn't appear to be looking for him.

The whole town had been surrounded and all means of travel blocked. It seemed the military was more interested in keeping people from getting _out _than in preventing a single individual from sneaking _in_.

Worst of all, the Pulse Vestige was under heavy guard. Not heavy enough to stop him from getting inside if he really put his mind to it, but it would be almost impossible to do so and remain undiscovered. And if he was discovered then it was only a matter of time until someone dropped a battalion or two on top of him.

Not good. Not good at all. Cloud was under no delusion of being invincible. Faced with sufficient firepower in the hands of sufficient numbers of at least adequately competent enemies or with heavy equipment, even he could be taken down by attrition eventually.

Just like Zack.

Even after more than three years, the memory still hurt, and Cloud quickly decided to focus on the task at hand: How to get inside the Pulse Vestige without being discovered? How to get out without being killed?

Not bothering to really think about it, he found himself drifting into a beach bar near the seaside. A flat-screen TV was running in a corner.

"...interrupt this program, to bring you an urgent Sanctum bulletin. Late last night, officials confirmed the presence of a Pulse fal'Cie inside the city of Bodhum."

Ah. That would explain all the soldiers then. Well, at least now he had confirmation that it wasn't him they were looking for.

"Acting with fal'Cie Eden's approval, authorities declared a state of emergency."

They were easily spooked, those Cocoonians, weren't they?

"The entire district, will be quarantined in response to this crisis."

Damn. And with his luck, the fal'Cie was probably _inside_ the Vestige. Moreover, it was almost certainly somehow connected with his focus. Cloud would have loved to have some words with it, be it to find an ally against the Cocoon fal'Cie (they and the Pulse fal'Cie were supposed to be enemies, weren't they?) or merely to finally get some answers.

"This is a Sanctum bulletin. Late last night, officials confirmed the presence..." the news anchor began to repeat herself. Things had just gotten a whole lot more complicated. A fal'Cie in the Vestige meant total quarantine. There was no way he'd get inside without being seen. Unless... perhaps a disguise? That would only work if there were no identity checks though. Or perhaps...

"Hey? Can I get you anything?" He was jolted from his thoughts by a pretty young woman with half-length black hair.

Oh, right. This was a bar.

"Err... thing is, I don't have any money... because... you see, the military kind of threw me out of my house when they set up the quarantine." he responded with the first semi-plausible lie that came to mind.

"That's just typical. PSICOM's nothing but a bunch of bullies. Don't worry about it, you can stay here until you find another place."

"Thanks, Miss..."

"Lebreau. Nice to meet ya." the young woman answered with just the slightest sultry undertone to her voice, which Cloud resolutely ignored.

He spent the next couple of hours watching TV, hoping for some hint about when he might find an opening to get into the Vestige. Perhaps when they prepared it for transport? They were going to remove it from the city, weren't they?

At some point, a man in a trench coat with blond hair and a black bandanna arrived. He and Lebreau spoke about something in the backroom of the bar and it seemed like the issue was emotionally charged to say the least. A recent breakup perhaps? Cloud didn't know, and he didn't really care.

He was busy watching the announcer on TV who at that moment declared that there was to be an overnight curfew in Bodhum. Everyone outside after two hours from now better take care, or they might just get shot.

That wouldn't make things any easier for him. Not that things were ever easy.

Sometime later during the next hour, two men and a boy who might be seventeen or so arrived at the bar. Lebreau and the Blonde, whose name Cloud had overheard as "Snow", seemed to be expecting them.

"Huh. Lebreau, who's that guy over there?" asked the dark skinned men who was apparently known as "Gadot". They were standing just far enough from his seat that a normal person shouldn't have been able to understand what they were saying anymore.

"That? I think he said his name was Cloud. Damn PSICOM threw him out of his house when they quarantined everything, so I'm letting him stay for the night"

"Stay "for the night". My, my, Lebreau, I never knew you to be so forward." butted in the guy with the freaky blue hair.

"Shut it, Yuj." responded Lebreau. Cloud approved. "Besides, we have other things to worry about right now. Maybe on another day."

Oh.

It was probably a good thing he was sitting with his face turned away from them right now. Being seen blushing like a tomato just because of _that_ was probably a little unbecoming for an adult man. Cloud wasn't naive, nor was he a robot, he knew how those things worked and he had an healthy interest. He just wasn't much of an extrovert.

Alright, that was an understatement if there ever was one. The number of people who he'd regularly talked to since Meteorfall could probably be counted on one hand. No, make that one finger. He'd talked to Reeve maybe once or twice a month, and no one else. Certainly no women. Ever since Tifa...

He suppressed yet another painful memory and quickly turned his thoughts to safer topics.

Like the weather. Or the news anchor announcing something called "the Purge".

Wait... what purge?

As Cloud listened to what was being said on TV, he was quickly forced to conclude that the Sanctum was just as bad as Shinra, just less obviously so. Maybe it was some subtle difference in the tone the woman on TV used as she was talking, but the other 5 people in the room had apparently also realized that something important was going on. They were all listening now.

"Those rotten bastards!" Snow neatly summed up what everyone was thinking.

Next thing he knew this strange bunch of misfits (and didn't that bring memories) had retreated into an adjoining room. Looked like some kind of war council, and he wasn't invited. "You make yourself comfortable Cloud, we'll be right back." Lebreau had said.

Needless to say he eavesdropped shamelessly and listened to every word. The members of NORA (whatever that was supposed to be) where as disgusted as he was about this whole purge, and about as willing to just shut up and take it. Which is to say, not very.

He followed their discussion, listened to Snow's little speech halfway through it, and to the brave although reckless and somewhat amateurish plan they eventually decided on. He had other things to concern himself with, of course, but why not combine business with doing the right thing?

"I'm in." was all he said, and five heads turned as one as their owners noticed that he'd been standing at the door the whole time without any of them noticing.

"Err... you're sure?" the man named Snow, who was apparently the leader, asked him. "It's going to be dangerous."

The soft but dangerous sound the bladed killing implement on his back made as he pulled it a few inches from its sheath with two fingers before letting it slide back in was more than sufficient as an answer.

* * *

_**AN:** I've decided that from now on, I shall aim for average chapter sizes of between 2000 and 3000 words. I'm considering if I should merge chapters 1&2 and 4&5, but I'm a little worried that will mess up the formatting. Does anyone here have experience with merging chapters on this website?_


	7. Too Young to Die

"Are you sure you're going to be alright? I mean, no offense, but NORA's been fighting monsters for a while now, and it isn't always easy..."

Snow knew it didn't make much sense, but he just couldn't help but feel slightly protective towards the stranger who had joined them.

Maybe it was Cloud's small size and lean build (though admittedly he did look fit), or maybe it was the slightly feminine face. He probably also looked younger than he really was. Actually, come to think of it, his features might have had some similarity to Serah's. That was probably the reason then why Snow had this instinctive feeling that Cloud was someone who should be protected, even though he knew it was irrational.

"It's going to be fine." The man did not even sound offended or annoyed. He spoke like he was merely stating a fact. "I'll help you fight your way to the deportees in the front part of the train, and then I'll be going after my own objective."

Snow had to admit that Cloud didn't look scared either. In fact, as they waited for the train to depart for Hanging Edge, hidden in the cargo compartment the lock of which Maqui had picked, he seemed to be the only one of them who _wasn't_ at least a tiny bit afraid of what they were about to get themselves into. Not that the others, Snow included, would ever acknowledge their fears.

They were _heroes_ after all.

"You're sure you don't want a gun?" A little strange for Snow to ask that particular question perhaps, given that he himself didn't use one. He did not fail to notice the irony, though neither did he comment on it.

"Yes. I'm certain." came the response. And that was that.

Five more minutes passed without another word being spoken. Then ten.

Then the unexpected happened. Cloud said something.

"You know, I had a friend once who was a bit like you. He dreamt of becoming a hero and gave it his all. Always wanted to protect others."

"He did? Sounds like a great person. Did he manage it?"

"Yes. He did."

"Good for him!" Snow replied approvingly.

"And then he died." The words were completely bereft of any emotion at all. Suspiciously so.

"Oh." was the only response Snow could think of.

Snow might have been reckless, he might have been liable to making rash and overly emotional decisions and jumping into the fray without thinking, but he wasn't s_tupid, _not in the strict sense of the term. He recognized a warning to be cautious when he heard one. Cloud didn't sound like he was making things up either.

Awkward silence returned to the small cargo compartment.

* * *

"Let me on. I want to be purged."

The PSICOM soldier looked around as if to make sure nobody else was listening, and leaned closer to her to whisper in a low voice. "Only civs get purged, Sanctum staff and soldiers are exempt."

"Then I quit." she responded, and turned over her weapon. She'd just have to reclaim it later.

There. She'd done it. As Lightning joined the line of deportees to be, she was fully aware that within ten minutes she'd be sitting as one of them in that train to Hanging Edge. And shortly after that she'd be killing PSICOM soldiers, perhaps even her former comrades in the Guardian Corps, and anybody else foolish enough to try and stop her from getting to Serah.

There was no way back now. She was no longer a soldier of the Corps. Within 20 seconds, she had discarded all her dreams and ambitions in just two sentences.

She had no regrets. No, more than that, she had no _room_ for regrets. There was only the mission. Whatever else might happen, she would _not_ fail.

_'You want quiet, you better take the next train.'_ she told the man with the afro half a minute later when he inquired as to what she was planning, neatly summing up her plans for the immediate future.

* * *

"Ho-ly Shit." Gadot spoke for all of them when he made that utterance, no doubts about it.

They'd just emerged from the cargo compartment, psyched up for battle, and yet not truly prepared for it, when they'd suddenly come face to face with half a dozen PSICOM soldiers.

Fortunately the soldiers had been just as surprised as they. Snow had immediately sought cover behind a crate, looked for a path that would get him into hand-to-hand range without exposing him to enemy fire all the way there, and then charged boldly forward.

...just in time to see Cloud dispatch the last of their opponents, moving so fast he appeared as a mere blur in Snow's vision.

For a few moments they just _stared_. Then reality reasserted itself.

"What are you waiting for? Let's go! After him." commanded Snow, pointing at Cloud, who was already thirty meters up ahead, and currently laying waste to another squad of phenomenally unlucky PSICOM flunkies.

Whatever he'd imagined fighting PSICOM to be like, this wasn't it. As they followed the trail of destruction left in the swordsman's wake, Snow finally realized whom Cloud's features and demeanor should have reminded him of.

Not Serah. No, certainly not Serah. His face might look a bit like hers, but the comparison somehow seemed incredibly unsuitable now. No, _definitely_ not his sweet Serah.

Cloud was all thunder and lightning now. Which is to say he was _Lightning_, with a capital L in front.

Snow shuddered. _Those two,_ he decided, _must never be allowed to meet_. If they did, their combined stoicism and seemingly unshakeable no-nonsense attitude would probably reach critical mass and collapse into a black hole, soon to destroy all of Cocoon. For the sake of the world, and for his sanity, Cloud and Lightning had to be kept away from each other.

And heaven help them all if they _did_ meet and possibly became friends. The implications of that were just too horrible to even consider.

Cloud, meanwhile, wasn't thinking particularly hard about anything at all. He was too busy bringing panic, chaos and destruction to everything PSICOM that crossed his path. Death too. Considering what those soldiers had been doing here when he arrived he wasn't terribly inclined to accept additional risks for himself or others, merely too spare the perpetrators of what was quickly becoming apparent as a mass murder in progress.

Deflect bullets. Move to the left. Charge forward, approaching on a curve, then strike. Another one down.

Because no matter what the Sanctum's announcements might claim, this was no deportation. His enhanced eyesight could see armored figures shooting defenseless people lined up against walls in the distance. There was fighting too, in other parts of this gigantic cave into the ceiling of which this long abandoned hanging city had been built in. It looked like not all those meant to be purged were content to go quietly.

Missile approaching. Sidestep while running. Keep one hand on the sword, grab the missile launcher with the other, and use the weapon to push its operator of the edge while also smashing his face in.

His focus called out to him. There was no doubt about it now – whatever he was looking for was inside the Vestige. Time to wrap this up, and then find a way to get there. He could see the train's passengers huddled together between two heaps of debris not far up ahead. Good.

Deflect bullet, charge, stab. All hostiles silenced. For now.

Taking a quick look behind him, he confirmed that NORA was catching up with him. Also good.

But the Vestige wasn't there yet. Not good.

Bah... It didn't make much of difference.

If the Vestige arrived where his l'Cie sixth sense told him it would arrive, he could probably make his way there by crossing the highways... skyways... or whatever he wanted to call the almost free floating roads crossing the more or less empty space of the giant cave without visible means of support. He'd have to jump a few times, but that shouldn't be a problem. However, he just wouldn't feel comfortable with leaving here before making sure those people had at least a chance to survive.

"Damn. Man, you really weren't kidding when you told us you could handle yourself." commented Gadot as NORA finally reached his position. It was obvious the man was impressed. And Lebreau seemed to eye him even more... appreciatively than before.

"Let's focus on the mission first." he simply said in response. Nobody disagreed.

A few minutes later, a few of the deportees had taken up arms too, and now it was a whole small crowd of people following in the path Cloud cut through PSICOM's forces. Snow was starting to feel a bit redundant, really.

But that changed soon enough when one of those large gunships decided they'd make good hunting.

For obvious reasons, Cloud was the primary target. Under heavy fire from two turreted auto-cannons, he had to admit that a hit from one of those would probably hurt. Best to avoid that. He dashed past their field of fire, and jumped behind some debris in preparation for getting even closer to the enemy vessel. Whoever the pilot was, he'd made a grave mistake when he'd brought the gunship this far in. Let him come a bit closer still, and it would all be over in a moment.

At the same time, Snow made a break for the missile launchers one of the soldiers Cloud had taken out had been armed with. With Cloud drawing the gunship's fire, it was a sensible enough idea, and not even particularly reckless. Arm yourself with something that can hurt them while the enemy is distracted, then shoot them in the back. Simple enough.

Unfortunately it didn't work out that way.

One of the gunners must have seen him, because Cloud was no longer the only one under fire. Snow dived for the missile launcher.

He missed. A moment later he found himself staring into the barrel of the gunships main cannon. Ooops.

And then three things happened, all independently of each other, but virtually at the same time.

Cloud performed an impossibly high leap up into the air and above the gunship, swung his sword, and a sharp blue line of light appeared seemingly from the blade, and _cut the flying machine neatly in two_.

A silvery-blonde haired woman in elegant but mostly sensible clothing blew up the gunship's cockpit, and the unfortunate pilot inside it, with the very missile launcher Snow had tried, and failed, to appropriate.

And the gunship's main cannon fired, fractions of a second before it too was split in twain, and fractions of a second after the sudden demise of pilot and cockpit had thrown off its aim.

Thanks to this, Snow was spared from having his head pulverized by the cannon's high caliber shell. Unfortunately the projectile either hit some weak point, or maybe it was just a bit too much to take for the hanging road they were all currently situated on.

When gravity pulled Cloud back to 'earth' from his jump, he found that there was no longer anything for him to land on.

Thus, he fell.

* * *

_Well... crap._

That just about summed up Cloud's thoughts during that handful of seconds as he fell into Lake Bresha below. This would make things considerably more complicated.

He hit the water, descended a few meters until his momentum from the fall had been exhausted, and then quickly swam back to the surface.

Now, what should be his next step? It was probably best to first use magic to make a floating platform out of ice. Then find something up above that was still low enough for him to reach by jumping.

He was just about to do so, when a person suddenly fell from the sky (well, the ceiling), breaking the water's surface right in front of him and quickly sinking. Admittedly, this was new, and ever so slightly shocking. He'd never experienced it from the other side's perspective before.

Needless to say, he dived.

Less than a minute later, he was pulling the newcomer from above onto the small iceberg he had magically created. Examining the person before him, he quickly checked her for injuries. He found them. The woman was dying.

Bruises and possibly some internal bleeding from hitting the water at this speed were the least of her troubles. The real problem was a piece of shrapnel lodged diagonally in her back, looking like it might have been a part of some high-explosive artillery shell once. The injury would definitely prove fatal.

Bright red blood still pulsed regularly from the wound. That was bad. It meant an artery had been cut. But it was also good. It meant her heart was still beating.

First aid and some medicine wouldn't cut it here. This required some heavy-duty magic. Fortunately, he had such magic available.

Pulling out the piece of shrapnel, Cloud fired up his Master Magic materia and got to work. The bleeding was stopped fairly quickly, but the injuries to the woman's internal organs were more difficult to deal with. Thankfully his l'Cie abilities were turning out to be a massive help. This kind of precision work would have been difficult to manage with materia alone.

But he managed. Did a first-rate job at it, even. The woman would survive. He quickly used what until not long ago would have been an impossibly accurate low-powered fire spell to dry the both of them, and avert hypothermia.

An analytical, but also treacherously emotional part of him just at the edge of his concious mind suddenly made him realize that if he'd been able to do this a few years back, Aerith might have lived. If only...

But this time he didn't simply suppress the idea and the memories associated with it. There was no point in letting a past he couldn't change ruin the future. His friends had certainly hammered that into his head time and time again whenever he met them in the Lifestream. Ever so slowly, the message was beginning to sink in.

And at least this person here would live. The thought did more to cheer him up than any number of bested enemies could ever have.

At least _something_ unquestionably good had come of his getting involved in all this.

A few minutes later, Nora Estheim opened her eyes, and was pleasantly surprised at the unexpected but highly welcome news that she wasn't quite dead yet after all.

* * *

_**AN:** Yep. Hope's mom lives. Good for her, and good for Hope. But if you assume that automatically makes things better for _everyone_, then you have not thought things through. Can anyone here guess at the not-quite-so-obvious, but still pretty inevitable consequences of this?_


	8. Unconventional Naming Conventions

The flawlessly transparent crystal gleaming with blueish-white light would no doubt have been described as beautiful by most people. Under different circumstances, Lightning might even have (silently) agreed with them.

But as she watched it inexorably encompass and then consume her sister, it was the most horrible thing she'd ever seen.

Serah was dying right in front of her eyes, and she was absolutely powerless to prevent it. Useless. All she could do was stand there like an idiot, and watch.

She knew about the legends, of course. They said that l'Cie who fulfill their focus would gain eternal life and live forever. Allegory perhaps, or maybe just an invention of clever storytellers. Lightning didn't know.

What she did know was that in order to live, a person needs intact vital organs. Not cold, hard crystal.

She tried. She tried so very hard to believe that Serah wasn't dead, that she'd turn back, even if right now Lightning could see into her chest and back out the other side, and there was nothing there. It wasn't enough.

She'd failed. After throwing away everything, fighting her way through hordes of PSICOM soldiers, charging straight into the abode of a Pulse fal'Cie, after all that, she'd been able to do absolutely _nothing_ to keep Serah safe.

Lightning wanted to scream, she wanted to rage against the unfairness of it all, but mostly she was just struggling not to cry. Because no matter what, Lightning didn't cry. It wasn't who she was.

So she did what came naturally: She punched Snow after he said something stupid.

And then she went to kill that fal'Cie bastard who had murdered her sister.

There was a fight, of course. Her, Snow and the man in the olive coat who'd followed her here against a dreaded Pulse fal'Cie. Mere mortals, trying to take on a being beyond their comprehension. And incredibly enough, they won. Or at least they survived long enough for the fal'Cie to suffer a mortal wound at the hands of the military. Judging by the constant tremor of explosions, PSICOM seemed to be unloading enough firepower to level a small city into the Pulse Vestige.

And then there was a world of darkness, a giant of dark silver and azure, and the sound of church bells.

* * *

"What is _happening_?" For the first time since she'd awoken, Nora Estheim allowed fear to blend into her voice. Cloud had to admit he was impressed so far. For someone without any combat experience at all, who'd probably lived her whole life in relative security and comfort, the woman was doing an exceptional job of staying calm.

But now she appeared to be reaching her limits, and he couldn't blame her. This whole mess was quickly approaching a level of freakishness normally reserved for potentially world-ending calamities in progress.

A few minutes ago, the military had finally opened up on the Vestige with all guns blazing. The structure had seemingly weathered the storm and simply remained floating. But _something_ was still going on. There was a power in the air, like an electrical charge that just kept building up, right up until the inevitable overload.

Then, suddenly, spikes of blue crystal erupted from the interior of the Vestige, and seemingly exploded into a wave of magical force that utterly destroyed anything nearby. The countless viaducts traversing the giant cave were swept away like twigs. Skyscrapers hanging from the cave's ceiling were bent, or simply shattered. Colossal pieces of debris plunged into Lake Bresha, and the once quiet lake quickly turned anything _but_ quiet. It was all they could do to hold on to their little iceberg.

Then whatever force had kept the Vestige floating hundreds of meters in the air so far failed, and the structure dropped like a stone. And when it reached the ground, everything _froze_.

Visually, it must have been extremely impressive. Monster waves frozen where they stood, transient valleys of water turned into seemingly eternal canyons defined by semi-transparent walls, tens of thousands of small crystallized fragments raining from above like fine snow...

Cloud had eyes for none of it.

All he cloud perceive in those moments was the agonized shrieking of the Lifestream as it was trapped, choked, strangled. It was like nothing he had ever heard. Like screams of the damned right out of the most vividly imaginative visions of hell ever invented by the weirdest of all ancient religions. Mere words were not enough to describe it.

It needed to _stop!_

It did. The Lifestream fell silent as abruptly as it had cried out, the sounds of hell being replaced with the silence of a graveyard in a mere instance.

He opened his eyes to behold a world made out of otherworldly beautiful, timelessly elegant, and utterly repulsive gleaming crystal.

* * *

_'Snow? You're nothing but talk.'_

He kept digging, and tried not to think about what Lightning had told him not 30 minutes ago. What did she know anyway? He _would _protect Serah. He'd fulfill his focus, save Cocoon, Serah would wake up, and everything would be alright.

_'Great job so far.'_

And Lightning, Lightning's opinion just didn't matter. Snow knew that Serah loved her sister dearly, and he guessed he couldn't deny that Lightning also seemed to care for Serah, or she wouldn't have been there in the Vestige, but still... damn, she was just such an utter and complete bitch back there.

The blasted crystal didn't break down anywhere near fast enough, and Snow redoubled his efforts. At this rate he'd never get Serah's frozen body free of the stuff in time. He'd have to work harder. He was very careful to avoid thinking about how he was even supposed to begin transporting his crystallized fiancee away from here after that.

It was easy. Snow was good at not thinking things through.

He kept chipping away at the crystal. Soon, he lost all track of time.

"Excuse me?"

He was so absorbed in trying to get Serah free that for a few moments his mind didn't even register the words that had been spoken.

"Hey!"

Snow whirled around, ready for a fight. Instead of being attacked by PSICOM soldiers, he found himself looking right at two familiar faces. Cloud, and that woman from earlier.

Wait... weren't they supposed to be dead?

"You're alive! How?" Well, at least now there was finally some good news.

"Yeah." Cloud replied, completely ignoring the "how" part of the question. "Snow, are there any other people with you? I'm pretty sure I... noticed more than just you before." Cloud said.

"What about Hope. Did you get him out of there safely? Is he alright?" the woman asked, visibly afraid of the answer she'd receive. Snow felt for her. There was no way to say if her kid had gotten out alive of that mess back up above.

Wait...

Those two had _exactly_ the same shade of silver hair.

"Is your kid the one with the yellow jacket? Same hair as yours?" That couldn't just be coincidence, could it?

"Yes."

Snow gulped. How to tell a fearful mother that her son was now a pulse l'Cie?

The woman seemed to misinterpret his shocked silence in the worst way possible. She almost collapsed right there, and probably would have if the swordsman besides her hadn't supported her.

"NO! That's not what I meant! He's alive, it's just..." Once again, he couldn't find the words.

"Where is he?" Cloud asked, coming straight to the point.

"He's with Lightning and the others... Sazh, and Vanille. They went that way." he indicated the direction they had gone. "But I don't think you'll find them in this place. We were already attacked by a patrol earlier, so they'll be trying to stay hidden."

"We'll find them." Cloud stated, and his voice had the same quality to it as earlier, when he'd told them he'd be fine against PSICOM. "What about you? You can't stay here."

"I'm not leaving Serah! Go. I'll catch up."

Cloud seemed to want to argue the point for a moment, but then he just nodded, as if realizing that nothing he could ever say would make Snow reconsider.

"Good luck."

And off they were. Somehow, Snow didn't doubt for a second that they'd really find the others.

It was only much later that he realized what that meant: Cloud and Lightning were going to meet after all. Damn. Clearly, the end of the world was swiftly approaching now.

* * *

Cloud was carrying Nora Estheim (that was her name, he'd learned) piggyback style on his back now. It might have looked ridiculous, but even with his running speed decreased somewhat they were still moving much faster this way.

When they'd run into the first group of PSICOM soldiers and Cloud had gone through them like a lawnmower through grass, Nora hadn't even batted an eye. All she'd done was pick up one of the guns left lying on the ground and waited for him to give her the okay to move on. The woman really was though.

They were quickly catching up now, he could feel it. Ever since the moment immediately after that magic burst when the Vestige had fallen, his focus had seemingly gone schizophrenic. Instead of the single mental signpost that he'd been following so far, there were now a whole bunch of them.

One had led them to Snow, and had remained with him when they'd moved on. Four were in the direction they were currently moving, and Cloud would have bet his Fusion Sword (if he hadn't already lost it, anyway) that they would lead him to the people they were looking for. The last one was miles away, and it somehow felt subtly different from the others.

He didn't really understand it, but he was all but certain that his focus was somehow connected to the people who were now as visible as a bonfire on that map within his mind. He figured if he just found the largest group of them, and kept sticking around them for long enough, he might eventually be able to tell what exactly his focus was.

But to tell the truth, he was already kinda sick of it. What did he care for a random task some inscrutable and indifferent fal'Cie had given him? It was quite clear anyway that the fal'Cie didn't have humanity's best interest at heart. But then again, what else was there to do other than follow his focus? At least it was something to do.

They were entering some kind of ruin now. Crystal everywhere, even the flames from when the place had burned down appeared to have been crystallized. The sight made him sick. Whatever this stuff was, and however beautiful it seemed on the surface, to Cloud it just felt utterly wrong.

There were bodies too, both of soldiers and those weird trained animals they used for support in battle. Some of the wounds that had felled them were still bleeding - the group they were following must have come through here just a few minutes ago.

Then, in the distance, sounds of fighting.

Just before they came round the corner into what was obviously a combat zone, Cloud slowed down and let Nora jump down from his back. Neither of them wasted any words after that.

Cloud charged right into the fray, relying on surprise and a swift and straightforward frontal assault to deal with whatever he'd encounter there. In the split second before he reached the location of the fight, his gaze swept over the scene before them.

On one side, a man armed with two pistols, a woman with a gunblade, a girl shooting magical projectiles from some sort of staff or rod, and a boy with a boomerang.

On the other side, a large flying animal of some sort, showing clear signs of artificial modification, and bleeding from multiple injuries. One of the military's war beasts then.

The four humans already present appeared to be winning, or at least holding their own, but that was no reason not to help.

Following a sudden impulse, Cloud reached out with his magic and shaped the energies in just the right way. He didn't quite understand _how_ he'd done it, but the results spoke for themselves. A massive blast of compressed air swept over the creature and violently slammed it straight into a wall. Cloud closed the distance before the monster had time to get back up or even to merely grasp what exactly it had just been hit by.

One quick strike to the neck, and that was the end of it. It was actually a bit anti-climatic.

When he turned around, the four people behind him appeared to still be processing what had just happened.

"Hope!" That was Nora.

"M... Mom? Mom!" The boy sounded equal parts astonished and elated.

While the tearful reunion between the two of them took place, Cloud sheathed his weapon and moved closer to the group. Most of them were observing mother and son embracing now. All but the pink-haired woman with the gunblade, who was still watching him warily.

"Who're you?" Straight to the point, it looked like. Fair enough.

"Cloud." he answered.

"Cloud? What do you mean, cloud?" She appeared to be honestly confused, but there was also a definite undertone of annoyance audible in her tone.

"My name. I'm Cloud." It wasn't the first time he got that reaction. He'd stopped being offended by it a long time ago. "And you are?"

"Lightning." the young woman answered after a moment's hesitation.

Cloud inclined his head just the slightest bit and looked right at her. Her name was _Lightning_ and she thought his name was strange? Lightning meanwhile made a point of totally ignoring his reaction.

With nothing more left to say, they then both turned around and joined the others.

One and a half kilometers away, Snow suddenly and inexplicably felt a cold shudder run down his spine.


	9. Crossroads

Had Barthandelus had veins, and had there been blood in them, it would probably have turned to ice that very moment.

How? How could the Cocoon l'Cie possibly be here? He was supposed to be in Eden, safely locked away in the heart of Cocoon's military, surrounded by thousands of soldiers to guard him. Instead, he was here, in precisely the one place where he absolutely could not be.

But as he watched from afar through the eyes of his silvery, owl-like rukh familiar Menrva, there was no denying what its eyes told him. Strife was here, talking to one of his irreplaceably precious l'Cie even now.

This was an absolute disaster, very nearly the worst case scenario. If Strife knew his focus, if he acted on it... all his carefully laid plains, all his centuries of preparation, it could all be undone within mere moments. The plan was already risky enough as it was. Too many things could go wrong.

Was this what fear felt like? Just a few hours ago he could have stated with absolute certitude that such a base feeling was below a fal'Cie such as him, but now he wasn't so sure anymore.

For a few moments Barthandelus went so far as to seriously consider dropping this facade right here, right now. To openly show himself in all his true splendor and slay the interloper straight where he stood, before he could do any more damage. But that was simply not feasible, the consequences of such an act being witnessed by the other l'Cie... they might prove just as destructive to the plan as Strife himself.

As he watched the l'Cie enter the "abandoned" airship he had left for them, he decided that for now at least, he would have to take the risk and hope that Strife was still unaware of his purpose as a l'Cie. He certainly showed no sign of things being otherwise. But as soon as the situation changed and the possibility presented itself, Barthandelus would not hesitate to remove this volatile and disruptive factor from the equation.

For good, this time. And as for Nabaat, well, dear Jhil had some explaining to do.

* * *

It seemed like for the first time this day, they had gotten lucky. Finally. There was a PSICOM airship in these ruins, small, but armed, fast and maneuverable. And most importantly, entirely unsecured. Cloud guessed it must have belonged to some of those PSICOM troops that were now lying lifelessly on the cold, hard stone floor a few rooms behind them. Well, being reprimanded by their superiors for this breach in security would hardly be anything for them to be concerned about now.

And it wasn't even missing a engine, or in the process of being highjacked by some fat, incompetent business executive. The red-haired girl (Vanille, was it?) was right: This _would_ make things easier.

Apparently Sazh had some experience piloting a vessel like this, because he immediately took the controls. Cloud had no problem with letting the man in the olive coat do so. Best to let someone who knew how this thing worked handle it.

Apparently Lightning had different ideas.

"Give me that!" she barked while claiming the controls, and viciously strafed one of the gunships blocking the path out of the cave.

"Did we get 'em?" Vanille asked downright eagerly. Judging by the tracer bullets that were now racing past the cockpit, Cloud didn't think so.

Maybe it was luck, or maybe just the fact that Lightning was an amateur and therefore reckless enough to do things no experienced pilot would ever have attempted, or maybe it was because that Sazh managed to reclaim his grip on the controls halfway through, but somehow they made it to the surface in one piece. Bright sunlight greeted them, and so did another flight of military fighter craft.

A few minutes and one successful escape through a much too narrow canyon later, they'd seemingly gotten away.

For the moment. Then, the screens in front of their seats spontaneously switched themselves on, and a voice came from the loudspeakers.

"Next, an update on the status of the purge." said the reporter.

"Wait, this thing has newscasts?" What kind of military airship was this anyway? Incredibly enough, he appeared to be the only person on board who found this strange.

"Just moments ago, the Sanctum announced the successful conclusion of the purge, along with the safe arrival of the Cocoon migrants to their new homes on Pulse."

"Do we _really_ need to listen to this?" Cloud asked a bit sarcastically. He was almost surprised at hearing himself speak in that particular tone. He probably hadn't done so in years. Still, the Sanctum's state media reminded him entirely too much of the Shinra equivalent.

"No, we don't." Nora Estheim once again demonstrated her good sense by switching the screen and the reporter's voice off before the vapid airhead had any chance to continue. "Mr. Katzroy, please pilot us somewhere far away from here. I don't think we've seen the last of the military."

Almost right on cue, their pursuers emerged from cloud cover a mere kilometer behind them.

"Buckle up! This might get a little dangerous." Sazh predicted, and Cloud felt like congratulating him for so nicely summing up how screwed they were.

* * *

When Lightning regained consciousness, it was to the sight of a pair of blue eyes so intense they almost glowed. And those eyes immediately seemed familiar.

"S... Serah...?"

Then she noticed that not only were the eyes quite _literally_ glowing, they were also part of a face that definitely wasn't Serah's, and her hopes were cruelly destroyed.

"Are you alright?"

"Yeah." she responded, and accepted the hand offered to help her up. Looking around, she saw the others in their little group lying on the ground, unconscious, but seemingly not hurt. "What happened?"

"There was some kind of energy field protecting the cockpit." Cloud answered. "When we hit the ground it softened the impact." He indicated the direction to the left of them, and Lightning could see what was left of the airship. They had gotten out of _that_ alive? She almost couldn't believe it.

The others were waking up now. They had barely gotten to their feet when Lightning was already heading in a more or less random direction.

"Hey, wait. Where are you going?" asked Sazh, still rubbing his head.

"They're tracking us." she responded, getting ready to move on. It was dark, and she wanted to cover as much distance as possible before Phoenix's light turned night into day again.

"I know that. But give us a minute, alright?"

"One minute." And if they took any longer than that, she'd leave on her own.

"Oh, that's... Forget it!" Sazh was obviously not pleased. But he still forced himself to stand up and help up Vanille, then Hope and his mother.

One minute later, they were moving at a brisk pace across the rocky terrain. Lightning knew this area, she'd been here on monster hunting missions before. The Vile Peaks. Close to the rim, where Cocoon had been damaged during the War of Transgression, and full of scrap from Pulse that had been used to restore Cocoon's artificial crust afterwards, to repair at least part of the damage.

"So, uhm... Cloud?" asked Vanille. "You're a l'Cie too?"

"Yeah."

"How did it happen? I mean when did it happen? You weren't with us in the Vestige."

Lightning blinked. Vanille had a good point. Cloud had used magic, and he had moved too fast to be normal. But where did he actually come from? He'd seemingly just popped out of nowhere.

"I've been a l'Cie since about two weeks now. I was in Bodhum, looking for my focus when the Purge happened."

"Oh. Sorry about that." replied Vanille.

"Not your fault." Vanille cringed a bit at that, as if she was about to apologize for it not being her fault. Absurd as it was, it led Lightning to an interesting question: Whose fault was it?

"You said you were in Bodhum for your focus. What exactly was your focus?"

"I don't know. I didn't find out."

That could be true, Lightning guessed. She wasn't entirely sure yet what her focus was either, though she was fairly certain it _wasn't _saving Cocoon.

Then again, it could also be a lie. If it was a lie, if Cloud had anything to do with Serah becoming a l'Cie, then...

Lightning inhaled deeply. There was no point in speculating without having sufficient information or blindly blaming the first person she came across. Keep your eyes on the target... whatever that was at the moment.

"Then... why did you follow us? I mean, you didn't just find us by accident, right?" queried Vanille, apparently still not satisfied.

"I'm not sure. I don't know my focus, but I think it might somehow be related to you."

Slightly nervous laughter preceded the response he received. "Me? Why would your focus have anything to do with little ol' me? Are you sure?"

"Yes. And not _you_. All of you."

"Oh."

"Vanille? Do you think you know what it is?"

"Nope. I was just curious."

Cloud seemed to accept that answer, and the conversation ended there. So the swordsman was going to follow them around, trying to figure out his focus. Fine. At least he seemed to know how to handle himself in a fight.

They kept moving at a pace close to running for another two hours or so. At one point they had to evade a group of robotic Watchdrones, no doubt airdropped into the area by PSICOM to track them down. Hope's mother was breathing heavily now. Actually, she looked downright exhausted, even as she bravely soldiered on. No one else in their little group seemed to be anywhere near as tired.

Come to think of it, Lightning realized, they'd made excellent speed, and nobody aside from Nora was showing any real signs of fatigue. Normally by now even Lightning would have expected to feel some sign of the exertion. But she was barely even sweating yet.

Nora would never be able to keep up. This just wasn't going to work.

Before she could decide what, if anything, she should do about this situation, Vanille interrupted again. She pointed at a large shape, maybe two or three hundred meters up ahead.

"Isn't that a-"

"A warship from Pulse." Sazh helpfully pointed out the obvious.

"You mean, they made it this far?"

"Of course not. Not during the war, not since. They might have tried, but none of their forces made it into Cocoon. They only damaged the Outer Rim. Then, the Sanctum's fal'Cie pushed them back."

"Or at least that's what they say." inserted Cloud.

"Eh?"

"What you just told us, that's all history, isn't it? History, as written by the Sanctum. And they wouldn't be the first to lie about something important."

"Err... yeah. I suppose you have a point."

Lightning found herself agreeing with the sentiment. The Sanctum had lied about so many things those last few days. How were they supposed to know if what they had been taught at school about the War of Transgression wasn't just another lie? Heck, a part of her felt like her whole life had been built on lies.

_Because it was built on lies;_ that part of her now argued; _and_ _if Serah hadn't become a l'Cie, you'd be out there too right now, hunting l'Cie with your former comrades. Just like they were hunting her, and are hunting you now._

Soon after that, they encountered some kind of two-legged war machine left over from the Pulse forces. It must have been lying around here for hundreds of years, but it was still just as dangerous as back then. As large and heavy as a truck, it nevertheless moved with surprising speed, attacking them with its two bulky arms.

But none of that could save the construct, when Cloud darted straight into the blind spot at its flank while the rest of their little group were subjecting it to a hail of magical and non-magical projectiles. The pulse dreadnought didn't last three seconds after that. Lightning had been planning to do something similar, but Cloud had been faster. Much faster.

She approved, of course. It was good to see that his performance against the Garuda creature earlier had not just been a fluke. He really was an extremely capable fighter.

She was not, of course, vexed in any way at having lost the chance to finish of this enemy herself. To take offense at the skills and abilities of an ally was petty and foolish in a way that was below her, and should have been below any competent soldier - or ex-soldier, as the case may be.

Not that Lightning hadn't met plenty of people who broke that particular rule. For some time after she had joined the Guardian Corps, when stubborn dedication and sheer grit had carried her to her current level of skill, there had been plenty of those who begrudged her her hard-earned skills and the praise she received for them. She would not allow herself to sink to that level.

"We really should rest for a while." said Sazh. She guessed he had a point. They'd already crossed much more distance than Lightning would have considered practical in such a short time, and Nora looked like she was about to collapse any second now.

Ten minutes later, Lightning, Sazh and Cloud were sitting on part of the warship's wreck, looking down on the small lake below them and their three remaining companions resting at its shore. It was Sazh who first broke the silence.

He sighed. "Not much of a future for us, huh?

"Hard to picture a happy ending." That was an understatement, if there ever was one. Serah was dead, and now Lightning too was a l'Cie. Things being as they were, she didn't _want _to picture any sort of ending at all. There was nothing there she'd want to see.

"I stopped believing in happy endings some time ago." commented Cloud. "Even when you win, you still lose too many things on the way."

"Speaking from experience?" asked Sazh, not really expecting an answer. "I don't even know where to go."

"I do."

And she did. Lightning had never been an indecisive person, and she was not going to get into the habit. It was time to make a stand.

"There." she looked right at the far away lights of the metropolis floating in the sky at the center of Cocoon, more than a hundred kilometers away.

"Eden?" asked Sazh, sounding like what he really meant to ask was if she had gone totally insane.

"I just left that place a few days ago. I'm not in a hurry to return there." Cloud didn't seem to particularly like the idea either.

"The Sanctum's seat of power..." continued Sazh, irony practically dripping off his words "Just charge right in there. Why not? Give 'em a taste of l'Cie terror."

Lightning said nothing. She was not joking. She'd made her decision, and she'd stick with it.

"Why?" asked Cloud, without any trace of the obvious disapproval Sazh had shown earlier. It was a simple question, nothing more, nothing less.

"Because I – am – _not_ – going to let them control me. There's no place to hide for l'Cie, no safe haven to run to. It's die, or turn Cie'th."

The grim way in which she summed up their situation did little to improve anyone's mood. The others in their group had also climbed the wreck now. Lightning could see Hope cringing in fear when she said the word "Cie'th", but she couldn't bring herself to care.

"No... They want a fight? Let's take it to the Sanctum's door!"

"This isn't a game!" Sazh, sounded like he wanted to say more, but it was Nora who actually did so.

"Why does it matter if you take the fight to them? Don't you care what happens to yourself? Don't you still have so much too live for?" it was a heartfelt plea, utterly without any intention to cause hurt.

And Lightning did her very best not to react, she really did. Even if it was difficult.

She succeeded. Her voice remained steady and focused.

"It started with Serah. The fal'Cie took her. Now I'm a l'Cie too. And the Sanctum's hunting me, just like they hunted her. But who's pulling their strings?"

"I'd really like to know that too." Cloud sounded like he meant exactly what he'd said.

"A fal'Cie. Eden. Cocoon's Sustainer and Guiding Light. It probably ordered the Purge, too. Pulse, and Sanctum fal'Cie, they're all the same. And we're all the same to them: expendable."

"So? What are you gonna do?" Sazh asked. It was clear that she wasn't winning over anybody here. But it didn't matter. She hadn't really expected to anyway.

"Destroy it. Kill fal'Cie Eden." Avenge her sister.

"By _yourself_? Are you crazy? Say you pull it off... what's that gonna get you? Satisfaction?" Yes. Yes, that was precisely what it would get her. "Something happens to Eden, it's lights out for Cocoon." he paused for a moment..."Wait... you _want_ that! You're a Pulse l'Cie now, so you just want to snuff out Cocoon!"

"No!" Vanille interrupted. "What about Serah? She said to save Cocoon. It might even be our focus-"

"Our focus doesn't matter! I – don't – take orders from fal'Cie. How I live is up to me."

"Don't you mean... how you die?" Sazh asked, now without any of the accusation that had been in his voice earlier.

"Think like that, and it's already over. Better to pick your path, and keep moving." Because what else was there to do? But they had one point. "Don't worry. I'm after the Sanctum. I'm not out to destroy the world."

Nobody quite seemed to know how to reply. Nora opened her mouth, as if to say something, but then closed it again, not finding the right words.

"I'm not dying a fal'Cie slave!"

And with that, Lightning turned around and marched off. She'd do this on her own. She'd survive on her own, fight on her own, and pay the price on her own, if it came to that.

As she walked away without looking back, she never expected to hear a second set of footsteps besides her own.

She turned her head. Cloud was walking besides her, in silence.

"Why are you following me?" she asked, sounding just as confused as she was. He hadn't even said anything during her little speech earlier.

"Because, like you, I am - _not_ - a puppet." he answered. There was something like sadness, but also determination in his voice. "Thank you for reminding me of that." He gave a quiet smile that conveyed no happiness, but instead merely sincere gratitude.

Lightning didn't really understand what he meant by that. Or maybe she did understand, and just didn't know how to reply. So she said nothing.

They left the others behind, nothing but the gaze of uncertain eyes following them.

Neither of them looked back.

* * *

_**AN: **And now we have officially gone off the rails, never to return. Or at most, we might arrive at a somewhat similar destination from a completely different direction. As an aside, if you're familiar with the story of FF XIII, by now you've probably figured out what I meant when I said saving Nora might have unintended consequences. If not, just consider how this would inevitably turn out if Cloud hadn't chosen to go with Lightning. Canon makes it pretty clear, I think._

_This is also the first chapter that's mostly written with Lightning as the viewpoint character. Though I loathed doing it, I lifted some of her dialogue from canon, only slightly modified. I really prefer to avoid doing that, but in this particular scence it just didn't make much sense for her to say anything else. Apart from those parts, what do you think, did I get her character down right? _


	10. Turning up the Heat

"They've seen us." Lightning warned, referring to the squad of soldiers they were currently trying to hide from.

"They did." agreed Cloud, and so did the sudden muzzle flash in the distance, followed by the impact of bullets on rock a few meters away from them. "Feign retreat, and I'll hit them in the flank?"

"Works for me." she said, and then they were both moving.

Shots rung out, and more bullets were sent her way, all missing wildly. At this distance it was extremely unlikely that either side would hit a moving target. Out of the corner of her eye, Lightning could see Cloud vanish into a small ditch hiding him from sight. Now she would have to keep drawing the enemy's attention.

She found a spot that provided her with at least some cover, aimed at center of mass while crouching, and fired. She wasn't really expecting to hit anything, the idea was simply to provide them with a visible target.

So it came as quite the surprise to her when the shot found its mark almost perfectly, hitting one of the pursuing soldiers right in the chest. She was so surprised that she actually wasted half a second before abandoning her current position and continuing to run. A mistake. Bullets impacted the terrain around her, and some of the impacts sounded like they were uncomfortably close.

How had she hit that soldier? Not that she wasn't confident in her marksmanship, she was one of the best, but that had been a one-in-a-thousand shot aimed at an erratically moving target at long range. And on top of that it was dark, she had no night vision gear, and had barely taken a fraction of a second to aim, lest she be stationary for too long and be hit herself.

It really should not have been such a shock, but somehow the sudden realization that she could _see perfectly_ even at night still came completely unexpected for her. She'd been living so much in the moment, she hadn't even noticed until now.

She run, and shot, and darted from cover to cover, and two more enemies went down. Then Cloud was suddenly right in the middle of them, seemingly having appeared from nowhere, and seconds after that none of the soldiers remained standing.

Was this the power of a l'Cie? Was his having been a l'Cie for two weeks longer than her the reason Cloud could move this fast?

Maybe. But there was no point in idle speculation. There was no time to waste – now that they had been discovered, it would not be long until more hit squads were sent after them. Lightning quickly moved over to where the group of soldiers had fallen.

When she got there, Cloud was already looting the bodies with the nonchalance of someone who had done so countless times before. Ammunition, medicine, smoke grenades, anything. But not the night vision gear.

They wouldn't need it.

* * *

"Poor bloody infantry is getting murdered down there. Damn, why won't command just let us drop the hammer on those bastards? How much more people do we need to loose?" The Lieutenant manning the communications console in the command center was getting visibly frustrated. Lt. Colonel Yaag Rosch could hardly blame him. They had lost no less than 28 good men and women in the last two hours, and absolutely nothing to show for it. They might have lost more by now, and just not know yet.

"Have some faith in our commander in chief's competence, Lieutenant. Those are l'Cie we're facing here, and Primarch Dysley knows a lot more about the nature of the threat we're facing than you or I do. He has good reasons for his decisions, I'm sure." He wasn't entirely sure whom he was trying to reassure, his subordinate or maybe just himself. Even so, he showed no outward sign of his own doubts.

"Of course. Sorry, Sir, I didn't mean to sound disrespectful."

"It's alright, Lieutenant." There was nothing wrong with showing concern for one's comrades. And truth be told he was at least as sick of this as the Lieutenant.

Not much happened after that. They simply waited, and hoped there wouldn't be any more casualty reports. Not that there was much of a chance of that, Rosch grimly admitted to himself. In all likelihood, PSICOM would loose many more people yet today.

"Sir? I just got new data." the Lieutenant interrupted his thoughts. "GC squad 13 encountered the l'Cie, and someone managed to transmit combat data before... before they were all killed, Sir."

Yaag Rosch felt slightly guilty for it, but he was actually a bit glad that this time at least it weren't _his_ people who'd payed the price. PSICOM division had lost too many already.

"Show me, Lieutenant. Do we have video footage?"

"Yes, Sir, and yes, we do."

What he saw on the display, it was difficult to believe, even for someone like him. The two l'Cie were armed with nothing but a Guardian Corps issue gunblade and a broadsword that must have been hopelessly out of date even a hundred years ago. They had no armor, no fire support, no nothing. And they still cut through the eight man squad opposing them like a hot knife through butter. He could have sworn the pink-haired woman had taken a grazing shot to the leg at one point, but when it was all over, there wasn't a scratch on her.

"Monsters..." whispered one of of the command crew who were now all watching the screen. Rosch didn't bother to reprimand her. The woman was merely voicing aloud what everyone was already thinking.

"Pause. And go back right to the beginning."

"Sir?" the Lieutenant at the console questioned while he did so.

"We have an excellent view of the direction the l'Cie came from here. And we know there's at least five of them. But where are the others? All I can see here are those two."

"I didn't see anyone else either, Sir." There were murmurs of agreement all around the command center. It appeared that only the two l'Cie on the screen were present when squad 13 had fallen.

"Keep observing the situation," he ordered. "I will be back in a minute. Primarch Dysley left very clear directives that he wanted to be informed if it looked like the l'Cie had split up."

And with that, Yaag Rosch left the command center. His subordinates, meanwhile, kept watching their equipment and occasionally speaking into their headset microphones to help coordinate the ground forces on site, and sometimes simply to make sure their comrades were in fact still alive.

Five minutes later, Lieutenant Colonel Rosch returned, bringing new orders with him. When he told his subordinates what they were, the reaction of nearly everyone in the command center could essentially be summed up in one word.

_'Finally.'_

* * *

"You think Lightning and Cloud are doing alright?"

Sazh looked up from the ground under his feet, and at Hope. "I don't know, kid." He really didn't. "But I guess those two are probably better at looking out for themselves than we are."

"I hope they'll be alright," said Nora. "He did save my life after all."

"Err... guys?"

"Do you think they can do it? Kill Eden? Why did Cloud follow her anyway?" Hope continued, either not hearing or ignoring Vanille.

"Nope. Not a chance. They'd have to break straight into the heart of the Sanctum to do that, and then they'd still have to find a way to actually _kill_ that fal'Cie. It's a suicide mission." Sazh said, without bothering to beat around the bush. "No matter how good they are. Two people can't take on an army."

"Guys!

"I still wonder... if I could have said anything to make her stay." mused Nora. "She sounded angry, but she also seemed... lost, somehow."

"**HEY!"**

"Yes. What is it, Vanille?"

"Look!" the girl said, and pointed at something.

When Sazh saw what it was, his eyes widened almost comically. "EVERYONE. FIND COVER. NOW!"

They did. But it wouldn't be enough, Sazh was sure of it. They didn't stand a chance against what was coming for them. They were going to die here.

And he hadn't even gotten to see Dajh again...

He was quite surprised when the airships promptly passed straight over their heads, completely ignoring them. Did they just not care, or had they simply not seen them?

_Must be the later_, Sazh decided, _If they'd seen us, we'd be dead by now_. Then he realized that if PSICOM wasn't really looking for them it probably was because they were hunting a different quarry.

Not many options for what – or rather who – that could be.

Sazh was glad to be alive, he really was. But he also felt genuinely sorry for Cloud and Lightning. Sure, the young woman had been a bit grumpy, and Cloud had those weird glowing eyes, but they hadn't seemed like a bad sort.

But even though he'd have liked to think differently, Sazh just couldn't make himself believe they stood much of a chance against what was now apparently coming for them.

* * *

"That latest group... their armor looked different."

"It did. They were Guardian Corps," Lightning responded, trying not to let the fact that she was now fighting her former comrades bother her, and failing.

"What's the Guardian Corps doing here? PSICOM is usually in charge of pulse related business, isn't it?"

She snapped at him. "I – _don't_ – know. Just forget about it." This was the last thing she wanted to think about right now.

"Doesn't this feel... off to you? PSICOM has a lot of airborne units, don't they?"

"Yes. Almost all of them are airborne. What's your point?" Lightning blinked. What was Cloud getting at?

"My point is, where are all the airships?"

He had a point. The military was clearly searching for them, and they'd been found by now. There was no way PSICOM wasn't aware that they were in this area. So why had no reinforcements shown up yet?

"If I was PSICOM," he reasoned, "and if I was trying to find two people on rocky, uneven terrain whom I knew to be-"

He paused when he heard Lightning suddenly curse audibly while looking at something in the distance. Then he followed her gaze, and saw just _what_ it was that she was looking at.

"Oh."

So _that_ was where the airships went.

Lightning could see at least six of them up ahead. And skytanks. And soldiers with personal flight-units - jet-packs to the lay person. Many soldiers. This was bad.

"Paratroopers. Maybe three quarters of a kilometer behind us," stated Cloud. Just great. _More_ trouble? Just what they needed.

She turned her head to see. And swallowed hard. They looked so small from this far away, but there were two groups of at least a hundred each. Two entire companies then, operating as independent units.

"They must know that we're in the area, but not where exactly," said Cloud, before pointing into a third direction, "That would explain those guys over there."

Sure as death, there were another two hundred parachutes descending to the ground in two additional locations. Fortunately, they were off by at least a kilometer.

A series of massive explosions suddenly occurred somewhere behind them. Lightning could actually feel the heat on her skin, and shortly after that the blast wave was moving past them. Thankfully at this distance it couldn't really hurt them. Fragments of rock, debris, and all kinds of stuff rained down all around them.

She never even saw the plane. It must have been flying too high for them to see, or more likely, it was probably already returning to base after having dropped the bombs a minute ago. She wondered if the crew knew they'd missed. They probably did. Had the men and women aiming those bombs known their exact location, they'd have been dead now.

PSICOM would proceed on the assumption that the two of them were still alive. Trying to hide and pretending to have been disintegrated in the explosion wouldn't work.

Lightning felt the sudden need to pinch herself, to ascertain that she wasn't dreaming. For a very brief moment before she could get herself back under control, she even felt fear. And not the more sublimated, low-key kind of fear that didn't really hinder you too much and the presence of which merely proved that you were still human.

No, it was just crude, raw instinct, that inherent flight response completely defying all intellect and conscious intention that she had spent years teaching herself to suppress. An endeavor in which she had been astonishingly successful. Successful to the point where that very success was actually a problem in itself, according to Lieutenant Amodar. She had been _too_ brave, too willing to neglect her personal safety in the pursuit of the mission.

But right now, none of that mattered. It did not change the reality of the current situation: PSICOM had just air-dropped an entire battalion on them. With heavy air support on top of that.

"Well," said Cloud in a tone that would have been more suitable for somebody advising her to stay inside because it was raining, "I guess we should start running."

* * *

_**AN: **Did any of you also think it was really strange how the l'Cie got away from PSICOM so easily at the beginning of the game? It's curious, isn't it? I mean, we're talking five people against a military here, and PSICOM's soldiers look like they probably have radios built into those helmets of theirs. One would think once the first group of soldiers has found the targets, it's essentially over – even if the l'Cie manage to fight off the first assault, there will be more. As many more as are needed._

_Of course, it all makes much more sense when you take into account the fact that Barthandelus needs the l'Cie as pawns in order for his Evil Plan ™ to work. If I remember correctly, he even outright states at one point that he arranged things in such a way that they could grow in power – level up, in other words – over a longer time span, all the while being confronted with enemies that are _just_ weak enough for the l'Cie to beat them._


	11. Near Death Experience

Cloud and Lightning ran as if a legion of devils and demons were behind them. Which wasn't to far from the truth, she guessed - they had mere minutes before all hell would break loose.

"Gapra Whitewood." Lightning hissed while running. Besides her, Cloud simply made a small noise indicating agreement.

They had to break through to there, even if PSICOM was in the way. If they stayed out in the open, it was only a matter of time until they'd be overwhelmed. But if they managed to enter the woods, it would be impossible to locate them from the air. Tracking them down on the ground would also become much more difficult.

She knew that the Whitewood was their only realistic chance for escape. Unfortunately PSICOM knew it too. It would be a race – could they reach the Whitewood before it was too late, or would they be found and cornered before that?

So they ran. Lightning was nearly pushing herself to her limit – even if it meant she'd tire sooner, that was a secondary concern compared to not getting surrounded by hundreds of enemies.

Then Cloud used some kind of spell even as he moved, and for a moment bright light made it difficult to see where she was running. She could feel the magic surrounding both of them - only to seemingly have no effect.

It was only half a minute later that she realized what had happened when she saw some small animal hurrying out of their way. The little thing moved as if in slow motion, even though it was obviously running. Actually, _everything _moved like that. It was like the whole world had slowed down. Or rather Lightning had sped up.

Out of the corner of her eye she caught a quick glimpse of her companion. She wasn't quite sure herself how she could tell, but incredibly enough, Cloud somehow looked like he could have run faster still. Though not without leaving her behind.

She pushed herself more, forcing her legs to move quicker. She would _not_ be what slowed them down. That simply wasn't acceptable. As her speed increased, so did Cloud's. And he _still_ didn't look like he was anywhere near his limit.

They were both running impossibly fast now. Faster than should have been possible for any human being, no matter how athletic. For a while she even thought they might actually make it.

Then four PSICOM Aerial Dragoons landed right in front of them, guns already blazing and spitting death in their direction. A bullet grazed her cheek. Lightning frantically dodged, just barely avoiding being hit.

Cloud didn't bother. He charged right forward on a merely slightly curved path, sword in hand and almost contemptuously deflecting the bullets as he closed in. How was that even possible? A jump into the air threw of the soldiers' aim, and then it was too late.

The PSICOM soldiers never stood a chance. She just barely had enough time to get there. When she arrived, Cloud had already finished the fight and was running once again.

With some shock Lightning realized that until just now, Cloud had been holding back the entire time. Or at least had not seen any reason to really fight at full capacity. Just how strong was he?

Outwardly she didn't show any sign of it, she just kept running. But truthfully, and regardless of how irrational it was, she could no longer deny that she felt... diminished somehow by how far ahead of her the blond swordsman obviously was. As if his very existence were mocking her.

_Look how poorly you compare._

On the other hand, did it matter? Lightning didn't believe in running away from hard truths, she had always considered herself a realist. And realism told her that she was going to die within the next few minutes.

But there was no time for her to ponder the issue. More Dragoons blocked their path, and slim as their chances to successfully do so were, they needed to fight their way through before the rest of the enemy's force arrived. Those hundreds of infantrymen were no doubt all rushing here right now, and she doubted that even Cloud would stand a chance against that kind of numerical superiority. She certainly didn't.

Had she stopped for a moment to think and analyze the situation, she would probably have realized that the infantry was _not_ what she should have been most worried about. Then again, had she stopped for a moment to think, she would almost certainly have been shot, so under the circumstances it could hardly have been fair to blame her.

Trying to keep up with her companion, Lightning bravely threw herself into a battle she knew she had no chance of winning. Unlike Snow, she was incapable of deluding herself into believing otherwise. But she fought on anyway.

* * *

Even as he wreaked havoc amidst PSICOM's forces, Cloud knew that they were in trouble.

He and Lightning were outnumbered at least twenty to one already. More enemies in those weird flying suits arrived every second, and he suspected that they were facing at least an entire company of them. Cloud wasn't quite sure what kind of numbers a company in Cocoon's military had, but he guessed at least a hundred. Pretty much the same as in the Shinra Infantry.

One hundred against two. And all the one hundred had to do was to keep the two busy for a while, until their buddies on foot arrived, and then it would be five hundred against two.

He sensed more than saw a soldier somewhere to his right take aim at him. Which was a problem, because he'd been about to dodge into that direction to avoid the spray of bullets the mob of enemies in front of him was currently sending in his direction. And sheer volume of fire ensured that he needed the sword in front of him to defend against whatever he couldn't dodge.

A company of infantry had been sufficient to bring down Zack, he recalled. Only three of them had been left standing in the end, but they'd killed him. No matter how heroic Zack Fair's last battle might have been, it had still been his _last_ battle.

Rather than moving into another direction, Cloud moved to his right anyway. But not without a slight curve to his path and an almost instinctive burst of magic inflicting confusion on his would-be attacker. A shot rang out among all the other shots, but went completely wide.

Huh. He'd done it again. The ability to use spells this way, simultaneously to also doing something else that was more complex than simple movements, that was new even to him. He'd never been quite _that_ good with materia. Well, actually, he'd been pretty sure it simply wasn't possible to be that good with materia. Apparently he'd been wrong.

Though he avoided consciously making the comparison, on some level he knew that he had long since eclipsed Zack in sheer superhuman combat prowess. He could probably deal with a company or two, and live to tell the tale. But he was less than certain of his ability to take on any more than that, or even just that many if they were smart about it.

Most worryingly, he could feel the Lifestream calling out to him. The cynical part of him told him that it was probably trying to bid him welcome to the afterlife, in which he'd shortly arrive. But no, it wasn't that simple.

The Lifestream was trying to tell him something, something important, and he was completely missing it. He couldn't understand a word of it, not that what he perceived could adequately be described as words in the first place. All he could discern was a location, a place he should seek out. Unfortunately it was entirely in the wrong direction.

He brought down three more flying enemies via a magic gust of air and telekinetic force smashing them down into the ground, where his sword was waiting for them. Twice their number in replacements promptly took their place, and Lightning managed to catch them by relative surprise while they focused on him. She got three of them before her luck finally ran out and she caught a bullet in the stomach.

And then she continued fighting as if she hadn't just suffered an immediately life-threatening injury. Had she even noticed? Perhaps not.

It was obvious that Lightning was pushing herself way past her limits. It was equally obvious that it wouldn't be enough, not against this.

Cloud suddenly realized that he could probably make it if he abandoned Lightning here and just made a break for it. There was a certain logic to it too - if it was a choice between one of them dying for certain and the other escaping, and both of them probably dying, it might be argued that the first outcome was preferable.

But even if he wasn't particularly close with the former Guardian Corps member, they were on the same side, and leaving his companions to die because it was tactically justifiable just wasn't in his nature. At least... not voluntarily. And he still hadn't forgiven himself for those times when it had happened against his will.

The next few minutes were a chaotic mess of bullets whizzing past them, sword and saber meeting bullet and bayonet, and severe unpleasantness in general. It must have been even worse for the guys on the other side.

Even while fighting, the two of them never stopped moving forward. Battered and bleeding, they nevertheless punched straight through the line of PSICOM soldiers in their way. The infantry on foot would not be able to catch up before they reached the Whitewood now.

And then the Aerial Dragoons suddenly and inexplicably pulled back, and had Cloud been less experienced in reading the flow of battle, he might have wondered if they'd simply had enough.

Unfortunately that wasn't the case.

He noticed the skytanks mere moments before they opened fire. Floating in the air high above, almost a kilometer away, they were utterly out of his reach. But the same wasn't true the other way around.

The projectiles actually took a few moments to cross the distance at this range. In that crucial second, Cloud had barely enough time to leap behind a large piece of scrap from some Pulse machinery and find cover. Then the shells impacted, and _everything_ exploded.

But not Cloud, thankfully, because he wasn't where the shots had been aimed anymore. Not Lightning either, because the skytanks had been targeting Cloud. Even so, the blast wave still picked her up like a crash test dummy and sent her flying. She collided with a large rock with brutal force and then rolled to a stop on the ground.

For a moment it looked like even after that she was still going to get up. Then exhaustion and the countless injuries she'd already received, some small, some major, finally took their toll. Bleeding from at least 7 bullet wounds and countless other injuries, Lightning collapsed. Even though she fought it all the way.

Cloud felt real sympathy. He knew from personal experience exactly what it was like to want to act, to just _do something_, to put all your willpower behind that something, only to fail because your body just wouldn't co-operate.

And to make things worse, if things didn't change very soon, he might also end up like that in the very near future.

Continuing to try to break through to the Whitewood was suicide. He'd be subjected to artillery fire the entire way, and by now the Aerial Dragoons had probably set up another defensive line up ahead. Staying put was _also_ suicide, since every second lost was one more second for PSICOM to bring more firepower to bear against him. Cloud was out of options.

He wasn't sure why he decided to do it, or if it was really the right thing to do, but with so few other options he decided to take a chance. Time for another Aerith Gainsborough gamble: When in doubt, follow the Lifestream.

As for the fact that doing so once too often was ultimately what had gotten Aerith killed, that was something he made very sure to conscientiously forget for the moment.

So he followed that strange pull that had now returned in full force, guiding him straight into a nearby ravine that would unfortunately lead him nowhere near Grapa Whitewood. But not before snatching Lightning's fallen form of the ground and throwing her over his shoulder.

It might not be a very dignified mode of transportation, but sacrifices had to be made if they were both to get out of here alive. Lightning was a comrade-in-arms, and as long as she was still drawing breath he would not leave her behind.

* * *

If there was one thing Lightning had learned during the last fifteen minutes, it was that getting shot really hurt.

So did getting cut with a bayonet. Or being thrown onto hard rock by fiery explosions. Or a thousand other things.

Why did Cloud even bother to try and get her out of ? She was done for either way. Everything hurt, and she was losing blood way faster than was healthy. On the upside, once she passed out, she wouldn't feel the pain anymore.

She'd fought it. Fought it to the very last twitch her exhausted body allowed her to make. But now there was no denying that she couldn't fight anymore.

She was being carried like some helpless damsel in distress, for fal'Cie's sake! Everything she _didn't_ want to be.

Alright, not like a damsel in distress. More like a potato bag. But in essence it was the same thing.

It would have been humiliating enough under different circumstances. But the fact that she actually needed the help made it even worse.

It seemed PSICOM had caught onto the fact that sending infantry against l'Cie was bad policy and had consequently escalated to air support and artillery. The new tactic was working too. Cloud was being forced deeper into the ravine where he'd sought protection earlier, away from Grapa Whitewood and any chance of escape.

Why had he stayed? He should have run! He must have realized that she was only slowing him down.

What was the point in saving her life anyway? She obviously wasn't nearly as strong as she'd thought she was, she'd never have been able to bring down the Sanctum. At best she might have managed not to get in Cloud's way too much.

She hated the fact with as much fervor as she could muster in her current half-dead state, but comparing herself to Cloud she was forced to conclude that her performance in that fight had been absolutely pathetic. Heck, when she'd been hit in the abdomen by that first bullet it had taken all she had to not drop like a stone right then and there and just lie on the ground and whimper.

One bullet. Whereas Cloud had taken at least three. And hadn't even slowed down.

The bombardment was intensifying now. Maybe the bomber from earlier had returned? The walls of the small canyon sheltering them shook dangerously. Cloud sought protection in what looked like a small cave. A very small cave, the entrance of which was overgrown with plants and barely visible. How had he even noticed it?

No matter. It wouldn't help. At best it might delay the inevitable. She heard the thousands of tons of earth and rock above them groan as the cliff face collapsed under the hammering blows of heavy carpet bombing, but she couldn't bring herself to care.

She couldn't bring herself to care about _anything_.

Overcome by blood loss and exhaustion, feeling more tired than she ever had in her life, Lightning finally slipped into unconsciousness. Her last thought before blackness took her was that at least she'd see Serah again soon.


	12. In the Absence of Hope

Cloud decided he'd gone far enough into the cave. He was reasonably certain the ceiling wouldn't collapse on top of him any second now, and he had little time to loose.

Lightning was a mess. If he'd waited fifteen minutes longer, that might have been too long. But even though the sound of her breathing betrayed that her lungs we're currently in the process of collapsing, they still kept working. It was as if there was some especially stubborn part of her that simply refused to die without putting up a fight first, and didn't care about the odds.

The gunshot wound in the chest and through the lungs was simple enough. Serious, but the bullet had missed heart, spine and ribs and it was nothing healing magic couldn't fix. The blood clotting her pink hair really had him worried for a while though.

Fortunately it turned out that the injury was superficial only, probably caused by some piece of shrapnel that didn't hit directly. Good. Moving on to the punctured stomach then. He flinched a bit in sympathy – that must have hurt. It certainly had whenever he'd been hit there by something in the past. Having your body dissolved from the inside out by your own stomach acids was _really_ unpleasant. It was probably a good thing that she was unconscious.

And Lightning had _fought_ with that injury? Damn. To say that she was a fighter would obviously have been an understatement. He could only imagine what she'd have been like with mako enhancements.

It took longer this time, but as was the case when he'd healed Nora, he found himself able to fix injuries that he'd have considered far beyond his abilities to deal with so easily just a few days ago. Within the space of half an hour, Lightning went from riddled with bullets and shrapnel and on the brink of death to almost entirely recovered. At least physically.

She didn't wake up though, and she looked absolutely exhausted. Cloud really couldn't blame her. He actually felt a little tired too now. Might have been physical, might just have been psychological, might even have been merely the fact that he hadn't slept in nearly 26 hours – though he normally didn't really notice any truly adverse effects from lack of rest for at least two days.

But he couldn't go to sleep just yet.

He knew he'd been hit at least a few times. And while the fact that none of the bullets had penetrated much past skin-depth meant that he wasn't actually seriously injured, it also meant that those little pieces of formerly supersonic metal were still... well, _inside_ him. Unfortunately, his insanely accelerated healing, coupled with the fact that he hadn't been able to pause what he was currently doing and remove the bullets for some 40 minutes now, meant that most wounds had already closed over them.

He sighed. He'd always hated the next part. Still, he'd regret it later if he didn't do this immediately.

Living with the constant feeling of lead pushing against bone or muscle was simply way to annoying to endure for any time longer than an hour or so. Heck, that might even have been the _real _reason Sephiroth had gone bonkers. Had anyone ever thought to remove all the bullets the SOLDIER general must have caught over the course of his career, or had everyone simply assumed he was fine because his skin appeared unbroken? Pre-insanity Sephiroth had been enough of a brainwashed tool that he probably would have listened to the doctors when they'd have told him never to attempt surgery on himself.

If that _was_ the case, Cloud might actually have felt a little sorry for his now three times deceased arch-enemy. He would be sure not to make the same mistake.

Yes, Cloud Strife did, in fact, actually cut himself. For entirely practical and medically sound reasons, sure, but no one ever cared about that. Cloud grumpily taking a knife to himself to get out that last itching bullet was something his friends had never failed to make fun of in the friendly spirit of ruthless mockery. Even Tifa had secretly found it hilarious, though she'd never said anything.

_Tifa..._

He sighed again. Why was he thinking so much about people he'd already lost, lately?

He really, really missed them. And he'd long since learned that thinking about them only made him miss them more.

Still... he couldn't help it.

* * *

When she woke up it was to find herself in a roughly circular underground cavern maybe 20 meters in radius and 8 meters in height. It looked natural, but it also looked like someone had shaped the rock with tools after the original cave system was formed. Not to so much to _change_ the place, but rather to... perfect it, for lack of a better word.

As in some many places on Cocoon, luminescent crystal brought light to were there should have been only darkness. She had no trouble of seeing things.

Her wounds were gone. In fact, so were many of all the scratches and small cuts she'd suffered earlier over the course of the last day or so. As she cautiously stood up, checking herself for injuries, she found that she was in remarkably good condition. For someone who'd been dying, at any rate.

How strange. She'd been so certain that she wouldn't wake up at all. For a moment she wondered if she was dead after all, and this was the afterlife, or if it had all been a delusion. But the state of her clothing quickly convinced her otherwise – it was covered in dirt, and bullet holes, and dried blood.

She was alone. Cloud was nowhere to be seen.

It made sense, she decided. He'd carried her here and healed her wounds because that was the decent thing to do. Then he'd left, since it was obvious now that she wouldn't be able to keep up anyway.

It was a perfectly reasonable course of action. Somehow the fact that she herself probably wouldn't actually have acted this way, had their positions been reversed, never occurred to her. After all she really couldn't blame him for doing the smart thing. And it was not like they were friends or anything like that, they'd literally known each other for less than a day.

She still felt betrayed somehow.

"I really am pathetic."

Lightning had always believed herself a skilled and capable fighter.

No, more than that. She'd been the best in her unit by far, and she'd known it. It was the result of natural talent, but also the unshakeable determination to grow strong she'd found within herself after her parents' deaths, and then years of backbreaking work to achieve that goal. She had thrown herself into the task with an unmatched drive unlike anything her commanding officer Lieutenant Amodar had ever seen before.

Some had called her obsessed, a workaholic who didn't know how to live. Others had called her ambitious, aiming for high places and honors. Some had been envious and resentful, some had admired her for her abilities.

None had come close to the truth.

It wasn't about ambition, or becoming an officer and climbing through the ranks. No, nothing like that. Those things had at best been a welcome bonus, nothing more.

What Lightning really wanted was _validation_. Something to show her that she'd succeeded in becoming what she had been trying to be ever since her mother died: A new person. No longer was she Claire, a fifteen year old kid all alone except for a little sister who was even more scared than she was. She was Lightning now. Flashing brightly, but lingering only for a moment. Too forceful and direct to have doubts, too fast and distant to have to fear attack, and thus invulnerable.

By changing her name, Claire had tried to change who she was. To become Lightning. And she'd done it.

She'd grown strong, physically as well as mentally... or so she'd thought. And she'd been proud of it. Fighting was the one thing in her life that she was undeniably great at. Perhaps the only thing she would ever be great at.

And that one great achievement of her life had meant less than nothing on a battlefield where she was as out of her depth as Claire had been for those first few weeks before becoming Lightning.

It was like she was fifteen again, and just as frightened and confused.

_If I can't even keep myself alive, how am I going to ever get anything right? The whole world is against me. I couldn't help Serah. I couldn't even..._

The harsh pain in her chest suddenly and rudely interrupted her ongoing descent into depression.

_What?_

It was the brand. It was burning like flames on her skin, and a ghostly pattern out of rose light was becoming visible in the air

"This cannot be happening..." she whispered to herself, without really knowing what 'this' actually was. Only that it shouldn't be happening. Not to her.

Not like this.

But it did happen. The light erupted into a massive pattern all around her. More on reflex than out of any conscious decision, she jumped up and away from her current position. Just in time to avoid the armored mechanical giant that had materialized in the air above her.

_Odin, _some mysterious part of herself that knew more than she did supplied its name, _my Eidolon._

_Eidolon. An envoy of mercy, come to bring a l'Cie without hope the only salvation she still believes in._

Lightning's hand wandered to the sword case hanging of her belt, only to find it empty. Right. She had lost her grip on the Blazefire Saber when she'd been throw against the rock by that explosion. Cloud wouldn't have had time to pick it up. She was unarmed.

_A swift and painless death._

The mechanical warrior raised it's bladed weapon and attacked.

_Just stand still._

All she'd have to do was to stand still for a moment. Just stand still, and then she wouldn't have to fight anymore.

* * *

Cloud had followed the tunnel for a while now. He hadn't really felt comfortable leaving Lightning behind, even for such a short time, but had been unable to find a reason not to. It wasn't like she could have wandered off without running into him.. The path behind them was closed, buried under thousands of tons of rock. And there was only one path forward - the one he was currently using.

And there was something there. Something important which he ought to see.

So Cloud went deeper into the mountain. Whatever it was he was searching for, it wasn't far away, he was sure of it.

It felt... familiar somehow. Comfortable. But also broken. It didn't make much sense.

There were no monsters here. No PSICOM soldiers, no anything. It was quiet and peaceful. Soon, he entered another circular room, this one apparently just as natural as the other one, but showing none of the signs of having been artificially enlarged. A second exit led to... somewhere.

There was also a small pool in the center of the room. Filled with a fluid. But it wasn't water.

Cloud felt himself taking a deep breath.

Lifestream. Pure concentrated spiritual energy. It had been a while since he'd last seen something like this. The sight was both reassuring and faintly unpleasant at the same time.

He approached. As he stepped closer to the glowing pool of liquid, he noticed that something was different... this wasn't how it was supposed to be.

This was clearly a natural mako spring. But it wasn't as alive as it should have been. No plants were growing around the pool. No large roots from trees above were reaching through the roof or the walls.

The Lifestream itself felt... stale... dead... no, those weren't the right words. It felt... refined.

But not in a good way. It felt refined much like the mako inside a reactor. Cleansed of memory, thought or emotion. This wasn't the Lifestream he was used to, there was no sanctuary for the souls of the dead to be found here. It had been reduced to mere fuel to be burned, almost.

Come to think of it... that was how _everything_ in this strange hollow world called Cocoon felt to him. He hadn't been able to identify it for what it was, but now it was clear to see.

Cocoon was what Gaia would have become if Sephiroth had won. Or at least if Shinra had continued burning the substance that constituted the blood of the planet for another hundred years or so.

But how? There were no mako reactors on Cocoon, were there?

By all accounts, this world should be nothing but a dusty ball of dead matter, without even the most primitive of bacteria living on it. But something else was allowing life to go on, even superficially flourish. It just wasn't doing a very good job at it compared to the Lifestream. _That_ was the origin of the all-pervading feeling of wrongness in this place.

And if the Lifestream in this place could provide no afterlife, what happened to the souls of the deceased? Was this why he was here? To somehow repair Cocoon's lifestream? But how?

Unexpectedly his eye caught the glint of something shimmering in the pool of almost-dead mako. Something round. A Materia? Here?

He reached into the pool, and picked it up. For somebody else that might have been inadvisable, but Cloud was so resistant to mako exposure by now he could probably drink the stuff by the gallon before feeling any effects. In fact the mako concentration in his own body probably came close to this.

It really was a Materia. A strange one, of a kind which Cloud had never seen before. He tried to use it, but nothing happened. Did it even do anything?

Cloud pocketed it anyway. If there was one thing associating with Yuffie Kisaragi had taught him, it was that one could never have too many Materia.

Then he returned to where he'd left Lightning to recover. He'd been away for longer than he'd intended to. She might even have woken up already.

The ringing sound of metal hitting metal confirmed that _someone_ was indeed awake back there. And in combination with the noise of something large moving and shattering rock, it could only mean one thing. There was a fight going on.

Cloud ran, cursing his decision to scout ahead. So there were monsters down here after all. What had he been thinking?

No. _What_ had he been _thinking?! _Leaving Lightning lying around unconscious and defenseless like that. Had he completely lost his mind? If there was a monster, and it had discovered Lightning while she was still unconscious...

Too many people had already died because of him (_'It was __**not**__ your fault, you promised not to blame yourself'_ a familiar voice whispered in his memories). Please, don't let Lightning become another one!

He ran. As fast as he could, without holding back anything.

He was too slow. He wouldn't get there in time.

As he had done many times before, Cloud Strife struggled with all his strength to reach someone in peril in time. And as it had happened before, he was too late.

* * *

The armored giant closed in on her, and his blade closed in on her neck. Swift and cleanly. She'd probably be dead before she even felt anything.

_Don't move. It will be over in a moment._

She dodged. Why she had bothered, she didn't understand herself. The colossal blade missed her throat by centimeters.

Odin wasted no time in following up on his first attack. A desperate backward-flip kept her from being cut in half.

For a short moment, an opening! She didn't hesitate to use it. She found a spot on Odin's hip that looked like it might have been vulnerable. It wasn't. Not even with electricity crackling around her fist as she delivered an inhumanly strong strike.

Then the mechanical warrior's knee in her face almost broke her nose. Actually she was fairly certain it had already been broken in the battle topside. The thought was oddly humorous. It looked like all of Cloud's hard work in resetting and healing it until there had been no trace of the injury was going to be wasted.

The battle raged for at least a minute. Maybe two. Without a weapon, Lightning found herself unable to inflict much damage – or any damage at all – but managed to just barely stay alive thanks to mobility and sheer dumb luck.

She tried physical attacks. It didn't work, and only got her bruised limbs. Perhaps kicking something made from solid metal wasn't so smart?

She tried projectiles of pure magic. It didn't work. Odin retaliated by smashing her into a wall, and once again nearly taking her head off.

She tried magical lightning, water, and even fire. It didn't work. A new cut was added to the already impressive collection her overcoat had acquired. A few inches deeper, and the battle might have ended right then and there.

She tried throwing stones. Why not? It wasn't like there was much else she could still try.

Naturally, it didn't work. Felt good though. But now Odin had her cornered. She was tired, weaponless, and everything she had attempted so far had been flawlessly countered. Victory seemed impossible.

_Why am I still fighting?_

The Eidolon's blade descended. Lightnings hand searched for something, anything, she could use to defend herself, and found a small metal object.

The sound of metal on metal rung out.

Oh. Right. The survival knife Serah had given her for her birthday. Looked like she wasn't totally unarmed after all.

Not that it would make much of a difference. Her arms felt numb from the force of that last blow she had just barely deflected, Odin was already preparing the next strike, and there wasn't any chance to dodge or block this time. It was over.

_Might as well just get it over with._

So be it. But not like this.

With no way out, she attacked. She'd inflict a small scratch, perhaps. Odin's massive blade would do a whole lot worse than that.

She made her scratch.

But the sharp, cutting death she expected never came.

And then her Eidolon stepped back. His weapon vanishing to wherever it had come from, the mechanical warrior went to one knee before her, conceding her victory.

_What?_

Why? Wasn't he here to kill her? He'd had her! All it would have taken was that one final strike. She'd fought to the end, but it hadn't been enough. Odin could easily have killed her just then.

_But I fought, _that part of her mind that had already known exactly what an Eidolon was supplied,_ I fought because I don't want to give up, even if there is no hope. Odin was here to help me, to offer an escape. I didn't take it, so now he'll help me fight instead._

She hadn't given up. She had felt like an ant caught in a battle between giants, mostly helpless and about to be crushed, but at no point had she ever surrendered to her fate. It was crazy, but the sudden realization came as a total surprise to her. And it changed everything.

Mere seconds later, just in time to see Odin fade away and return to whence he'd come, Cloud came charging into the room seeking to defend an ally in danger. As had happened before, he was too late. It wasn't the first time.

It was, however, the very first time that it worked out for the better.

_My life is not a lie, _thought Lightning, and greeted her companion with a tired nod.


	13. Level Grinding

It was almost noon, and yet not a single ray of sunlight reached the forest soil of Gapra Whitewood. The lowest level far beneath the bright and beautiful treetops was misty and surprisingly dark for a forest full of crystalline and luminescent trees.

That suited Lightning just fine.

Step by step, she crept closer to her target. She was already bruised all over from their earlier confrontations, but there had been no time to heal herself – he was looking for her now, and chances were he would find her soon. But so far there was no sign that he'd noticed her. She briefly considered if she should try to get closer still and attack in melee or use magic to strike at a distance.

Ultimately it didn't matter. Without any kind of warning, the question was rendered moot when her opponent suddenly became a blur of movement aimed right at her. A wall of air preceded him and almost swept her away like a leaf caught in a hurricane.

But only almost. Telekinetically anchoring herself on the ground, she weathered the storm and deflected his first strike with her "sword" - in fact little more than a large piece of carved hardwood. The force of the blow was brutal, but Lightning was prepared. Most of the momentum of the attack was harmlessly directed away from her rather than blocked directly.

Unfortunately that hardly even slowed her attacker down as he expertly redirected the movement of his own weapon to attack her from a different angle. As she had feared, she immediately found herself on the defensive against a veritable onslaught of blows, stabs, and cuts. She only barely avoided being hit during the first three seconds of the confrontation. Then she managed to gather her magic and the next time she was forced to parry, a massive bright arc of electricity erupted from her sword-shaped wooden club. She immediately aimed the energy at her target, and her desperate defense turned into a devastating offense.

It was a deadly attack, and expertly delivered. In spite of that, Lightning didn't for one second expect it to be enough. Still, her opponent had been forced on the defensive for a short moment, and she boldly seized the initiative... only to find that the apparent opening had been a trap as she just barely avoided taking a hit that would have ended the battle right then and there.

"Swords" met again as Lightning had no choice but to parry. The force of the attack made her arms feel numb, but she preserved. And then the hardwood of the weapon in Lightning's hand finally reached the limits of its durability, and was unceremoniously reduced to a half dozen small splinters being catapulted into the large roots of a nearby giant whitewood tree, leaving her unarmed and wide open to attack.

Her opponent lowered his weapon and snickered shamelessly at her predicament. "That makes how many? 21? Or was it number 22?"

"23." she replied, trying not to sound _too_ grumpy. It only ever seemed to amuse him. The weapon Cloud was currently wielding was enormous – the massive piece of wood might as well have been a tree trunk with a hilt shaped at one end. Actually, she was pretty sure that was exactly what it was. Needless to say it was only ever _her_ sword that needed replacing.

Shouldering the monstrous weapon he mistakenly called a "sword", Cloud returned to the particularly large tree under which they'd made camp. Picking up one of the prepared wooden swords there, he flung it at Lightning without even saying so much as "catch". Hard. Against a normal person it would probably have been a knockout blow if it had hit.

Their battle was still on after all.

Lightning, for her part, easily caught the odd projectile and once again assumed a fighting position.

The fight would go on for another 20 minutes before they finally called it quits. For now.

"You're still holding back." accused Lightning a little later while Cloud was examining her broken right arm. There was no real fire in her words though. It wasn't as if he went easy on her. She had the bruises to attest to that fact.

And to be entirely honest, with the way every last muscle in her body ached right now she couldn't really be bothered to invest too much energy into complaining.

"A bit." Cloud admitted. "But only because I think we'll both get more out of this that way. Your technique is just as good as mine. It's all about increasing speed and strength at this point."

Lightning disagreed. Alright, she _mostly_ disagreed. True, her sword technique _was_ quite good, and she guessed that if they were to be rated on technique alone in some sort of competition, she might actually manage to match Cloud in points. But apart from the speed and strength issue there was something in his fighting style that she still lacked, something that spoke of the experience of a thousand battles. It wasn't just Cloud's physical capabilities, it was how he used them.

"I still feel like I'm not making any progress at all. I know I can't expect to catch up in a few days, but..."

"You were moving almost twice as fast as yesterday, you know." Cloud said, and gripped her arm in two different places with one hand each. "I'll need to reset the bone. Hold still for a moment please."

She blinked. Twice as fast? How? Cloud had been faster than her yesterday, and he still was faster than her today, by about the same margin... unless... he was intentionally limiting himself to a level always just far enough above her own to provide her with one heck of an uphill battle, but not defeat her so swiftly as to give her no chance to grow.

And it was working. No that she thought about it, he was right, she was definitely faster now. She didn't really understand how their powers as l'Cie worked, but their abilities clearly increased the fastest when they were consistently being pushed right to their limits, or better yet, pushed notably beyond those limits. Which was precisely what Cloud had constantly been doing for her ever since they emerged from that tunnel three days ago and decided that they needed to be better prepared for their inevitable next confrontation with PSICOM.

She was probably getting a lot more out of these training sessions than he was. It was almost unfair. Lightning now found herself in the highly ironic and probably rather messed up (in any other context at least) position of feeling honestly grateful for repeatedly having the crap beaten out of her for two and a half days on end.

"Lightning? Your arm. The bone?"

Ah, right. The broken arm that needed resetting. She nodded to show that she was ready and braced herself for the pain. Lightning didn't like pain any more than most other people, even if she was quite good at ignoring it.

Nothing happened. Cloud's hands on her arm seemed to move a bit, but she didn't really feel anything.

"Are you going to do this now or not?" she questioned with just a hint of impatience. "The sooner we can get this over with, the better I'll feel."

"Already done." Cloud answered. "You didn't feel anything?" he asked, seemingly quite satisfied with that fact. Perhaps Cloud was also getting something out of the training after all. He certainly had gained lots of practice in using magic to heal.

Surprised, she looked at her arm and carefully examined it. Only now she noticed the soothing, cool feeling spreading from Cloud's hands until it pervaded her entire body. Strangely enough, the sudden absence of all the aches and pains she had felt this entire time, even as she'd stubbornly tried to ignore them, was as noticeable as the pain itself had been. It was like a heavy weight on her back had been lifted when she had already almost forgotten that it was there.

She could literally watch her bruises fading, leaving healthy skin and a pleasantly tingling sensation behind. For a few precious moments Lightning simply relaxed, closed her eyes, and enjoyed the nice feeling.

She was surprised at herself, really.

Then she reached for another practice sword.

* * *

"...the Star of Cocoon's Protectors and the Eden Award for Exceptional Bravery and Sacrifice." he finished.

Dysley simply nodded in response. "Very well. And how many people would receive these decorations in total?" Rosch thought the Primarch could at least have made more of an effort to not sound as bored as he obviously was, but of course he didn't say anything and instead simply answered the question..

"Everybody in Bravo Company who took part in the aerial assault that prevented the l'Cie's escape. 118 men and women in total. Posthumously in 67 cases. I know it's quite unusual to honor so many at once, but given the circumstances, I feel it's the least we should do." Bravo Company had been gutted, and yet it had not broken. A medal wouldn't bring anyone back from the dead, but at least their sacrifice should be remembered.

"You have my approval then. Now, as for those l'Cie. Have the bodies already been recovered?"

"No sir. They're presumably buried under all that rock. As per your orders, I've seen to it that recovery operations are underway. But it will take some time."

"Don't delay. It is of the highest importance that we are absolutely certain of their deaths. In particularly I want to be sure that Strife has been neutralized. Farron is of secondary concern, but keep me informed anyway. The primary issue is to ascertain Strife's status."

Why Strife? What made him different? It was highly frustrating, but the Primarch had done almost nothing to explain the reasons for his orders, even after the fact. Rosch understood the principle of need to know, of course, but then again, he _was_ a Lieutenant Colonel in Cocoon's military and the director of PSICOM's airmobile division. He liked to think that he could and should be trusted. And what kind of information could there be that was seemingly such a big deal to Dysley that he almost completely neglected the female l'Cie in favor of fixating on Strife, when at the same time it wasn't need to know for Rosch himself? He'd been the one in command of the actual operation on site, he should have been informed about almost anything regarding the mission.

Scores of soldiers under his command had _died_ acting on that information, fal'Cie damn it! He deserved an explanation.

"Yes sir. Sir, may I ask why you haven't ordered us yet to go after the other l'Cie? Based on the surveillance recordings we have recovered from GC's squad 243, they are not nearly as powerful as those two were. I'm quite confident we could take them out."

"Have patience, Director. Appropriate action has been taken, and will lead us to the desired results soon enough. In any case, you need not concern yourself with that. Lieutenant Colonel Nabaat has things well under control in that particular matter. I want you to focus on recovering Strife's body. We need to be absolutely sure of his demise. Understood?"

"Yes, sir. I'll contact you as soon as I have news."

"Good. Then you are dismissed."

Five minutes later, having left the Primarch's office, Yaag Rosch was still pondering the now deceased (at least he really hoped so) l'Cie by the name of Cloud Strife. He knew literally nothing about him, except for the man's name and the fact that Primarch Dysley had wanted him dead. In fact, at times it almost seemed as if Strife had been the only one of the two l'Cie that Dysley truly cared about killing. The other l'Cie, a former Guardian Corps sergeant by the name of Lightning Farron, might as well have been mere collateral damage judging by the way the Primarch spoke about her.

That in itself was curious enough. True, Farron was at least a known quantity, they had a birth certificate on her, a medical history and a mostly complete biography, everything one would expect to find when investigating any citizen of Cocoon. It was a pity. Going by what he'd read she had been a good soldier. But then she had become a pulse l'Cie, and thus a deadly threat to anybody alive on Cocoon. Yaag Rosch knew his duty.

But Strife? Strife was a mystery. And Rosch didn't like stumbling about in the dark when the price for every miscalculation would be paid in the blood of his subordinates.

Perhaps it was time to get into contact with some of the people at PSICOM Command?


	14. Seeing through Fog

"Wait... Did you just say you're a _Cocoon_ l'Cie?!" The sheer bewilderment in Lightning's voice had not been what Cloud had expected.

"Yes? That's why the brands are different, isn't it? You're either a Cocoon l'Cie or a pulse l'Cie, based on where the fal'Cie that turned you into a l'Cie came from."

For a few moments Lightning looked at him almost as warily as she had when they'd met in those ruins at Lake Bresha, as if he was once again a potential enemy and she was trying to decide what to make of him. He was starting to get a bit worried. Should he have predicted this reaction? After four days of training they had decided they couldn't afford to linger any longer, living on borrowed time as they did, and had moved on in the direction of Palumpolum. Without the constant distraction of training, they had started talking, and naturally both had wanted to know how the other had gotten into this whole mess.

So Cloud had told her. Perhaps that had been a mistake. He might just have destroyed the trust that had formed between them those last few days.

Then Lightning apparently reached some sort of conclusion, the moment passed, and the suspicion in her eyes instead became simple confusion.

"That... doesn't make any sense. If you're a Cocoon l'Cie, that would make you a protector of Cocoon, not its enemy. The Sanctum should be _helping_ you, not hunting you. _You_ should be helping them hunt me down."

He shrugged. "They did _claim_ to want to help me."

"And then they tried to imprison you. Why? If you're a Cocoon l'Cie, your focus should be doing something to keep Cocoon sa..." And there, Lightning just stopped. Literally, as in she actually stopped walking. "Save Cocoon..." she whispered.

Now Cloud was the one who was confused.

"That's what Serah said." she quietly explained when he looked at her inquiringly. "Save Cocoon. She said that right before... right before she died."

Oh. Right, she'd mentioned something about following her now dead sister turned l'Cie earlier. Perhaps it would be better to avoid that subject in the future. Still, did Lightning think there might be connection between her Serah's last words and Cloud's focus? It sounded important.

"Save Cocoon... how?"

"I don't know. Snow went on about how saving Cocoon was supposedly _our_ focus, but that's idiotic – we're _pulse_ l'Cie, which means we're _enemies_ of Cocoon. If anyone's supposed to save Cocoon, it's gotta be you."

He thought about it for a while. That would make sense... kind of. The Lifestream certainly seemed to think (to the extent as a transcendent but utterly impersonal force such as the Lifestream _could_ think) that his presence here was necessary. But what precisely was he supposed to do? It's not like he'd been given a detailed briefing 'Save Cocoon in 10 easy steps' or anything like that.

"Hm. Even if that's it, I have no idea what exactly it means, or how I should get started. So I guess we're back to square one." He wondered... if he _did_ know what his focus wanted him to do, would it make a difference? Would he decide to fulfill it to avoid turning into a mindless Cie'th, or would he still rebel against this blatant violation of his free will?

Lightning said nothing for a while, then started walking again. "Right. We're going to tell the fal'Cie where to shove it."

Cloud soon followed her and neither one of them could think of anything to talk about for the next ten minutes or so. Then something occurred to him, and he felt the urge to smirk.

"You know, you haven't asked me anything about the rest of what I told you."

"What? You mean that business about mako-something and being from another world? Phhh! " Lightning made a dismissive gesture with her right hand. "Magic and mumbo-jumbo. After what I've already seen it doesn't even sound crazy anymore."

He was definitely smirking now. "Really? No exclamations of disbelief? You're not even going to accuse me of being a liar?

"If you were lying, you'd have told me something that makes sense."

He had to admit, she was probably right about that. How nice to be in the company of such a practical person.

* * *

To Lightning's own surprise, they managed to get through Gapra Whitewood without a single incident. There was no sign of a search for them by the military – being officially dead had its advantages, it appeared. A large predatory animal the size of a large car had followed them for a while, but the beast must have possessed some semblance of intelligence, since it ultimately was wise enough not to try and make them its next meal. Keeping well clear of the bio-weapon facility located in the forest, they emerged early one morning somewhere close to the coastline not far from Palumpolum. Or at least she assumed as much.

"Where are we?"

It was a little difficult to see anything with all the mist in the way. In fact, she could barely see her own feet. She groaned, expressing her frustration.

"Where does this damn fog come from? I can't see a thing."

A few meters to her left, she could hear Cloud shuffling his feet slightly. Somehow it sounded... embarrassed.

"Cloud? Is there something you want to tell me?"

"I... figured we'd be less likely to be discovered if we had some sort of concealment. I might have overdone it a little."

Ah. So her suspicion had been correct. While Cloud's already obscene strength and speed hadn't increased anywhere near as much as her own during their four days of training, there was still one field where he'd advanced by leaps and bounds: Magic. Especially when it somehow related to the manipulation of air and air moisture. Lightning was starting to notice a theme here. Cloud and clouds. She guessed that made sense.

"Right. This won't work. I can't even see where we're going."

"I can. Well, sort of." said Cloud. She didn't reply, but instead simply waited for him to elaborate. "It's the mist. I'm not sure how to explain... I can somehow sense things in it. And see beyond it."

"Useful. Alright, you lead the way. I'll be right behind you."

"Right." And with that, he was off.

"Cloud. Wait." Perhaps she should have considered this earlier? "The fog's too thick. I can't see you."

"Err... sorry." came the answer.

She waited. The fog did not recede.

"Trouble?"

"No... yes. I can't make it thinner without losing volume."

She sighed. "Just forget about it then. Give me your hand."

And then Cloud was leading her through thick fog by holding hands. It was a practical, perfectly sensible solution. There was absolutely no reason for her to feel strange about it.

"You know, I'm beginning to understand why you changed your name to _Cloud_, of all things." He certainly seemed to have a fondness for the corresponding meteorological phenomenon.

"Changed my name? What are you talking about?" he answered, seemingly confused.

"Your name. Or are you going to tell me your parents gave you that name when you were born?" she said, trying not to sound _too_ sarcastic.

"Yes! And there's nothing wrong with that." Was that a trace of indignation in his voice?

"Wait. Really? Your parents named you _Cloud_?" That was kind of strange. She imagined for a moment what it would have been like to have 'Lightning' be her name from the get-go instead of choosing to call herself that when she was a teenager.

Probably quite horrible. Just imagine trying to get through school with a name like that. Her own, freely chosen name had certainly brought more than a little attempted bullying with it at first, but she'd gladly accepted that as a test of her newly discovered determination to stand on her own feet. Soon, all the would-be bullies had been much too scared of her to try anything.

"My mother actually. Back when we were living in Nibelheim. I never met my father." he explained. "You should have seen the fog we had there some days. This is nothing in comparison."

Nibelheim? As in 'Cloud's Home'? Strange didn't cut it anymore. This was surreal. Cloud's mother must have been a cruel, cruel woman. Or maybe just a touch naïve. Then again, it wasn't really all that different from someone calling their kid Hope. Or Snow.

"No wonder you got out of there then." she said. Cloud just made a noncommitted hmm sound, and didn't reply.

Neither of them said anything for a few minutes after that. Eventually, more to fill the silence than for any other reason, Lightning posed the first question that came to her mind.

"Are you ever going to go back?"

"Huh?"

"Your hometown. This Nibelheim. Are you ever going to return there?"

For a few moments Cloud hesitated. Then he responded. "That's... not really an option anymore. Nibelheim was destroyed in a fire when I was sixteen. There was one other survivor besides myself that I knew, but she died a few years ago. They rebuilt the town, but I really have no more reason to go back there."

"Oh." Lightning might have been fairly blunt usually, but she'd have needed to be a machine not to notice that this was a rather painful topic to Cloud. "Sorry for asking."

"Not your fault." he replied.

They kept walking. The ground under her feet was sand now, and she could hear the waves maybe a few dozen meters away. A beach, then. They must be getting closer to Palumpolum.

"So... 'Lightning'? If you thought I'd changed my name, does that mean you _did_ change yours? Are you _sure_ my name is the abnormal one?" queried Cloud, and it was impossible to miss his amusement.

She rolled her eyes, even though she knew he probably couldn't see it. "Call me Light." She said, and began to explain. Or at least explain partially. Some things were only for herself to know.

They arrived in Palumpolum shortly thereafter. Surprisingly enough, there was no battalion of troops waiting for them.

* * *

Eliza Monsoon had breathed deep signs of relief when the news had finally reported that the l'Cie in Palumpolum had been caught. Or driven off or something, the news anchor hadn't been entirely clear on that. She hadn't dared leave her house for two days. She had even heard from her neighbors that some people downtown had been caught up in the fighting and had been killed – or purged, depending on the source. It was really horrible.

But for now, she was going to take a walk and forget about all that. And tomorrow, she'd take a train to Nautilus, and visit her son and grandchildren. Then things could finally return back to normal. She might have been eighty-four, but she still enjoyed living.

As the gray-haired pensioner leisurely wandered along the beach, she couldn't help but notice that it was suddenly very foggy.

She had just decided to go back to her home and turned around, when she saw something moving within the fog. People? She really hoped it was people. She'd heard that sometimes aggressive wildlife and various monsters would wander close to the cities – the Guardian Corps usually kept them away, but with all this recent trouble with the l'Cie, who knew?

"He... hello? Is anybody there?"

Slowly, the fog began to lift. Eliza was now able to make out the two people she had seen earlier. A young man and woman. Certainly not the monsters she had been afraid of. She had the prettiest shade of pink hair, and his was blond. The two of them were holding hands, and she felt very silly at having been scared at what must simply have been a young couple taking a walk, just like she had.

"We're sorry to disturb you," the woman said, "but our aircar broke down a bit farther out, and we had to make our way here on foot. Do you happen to know of a place were we could get cleaned up?"

Only now did she notice the terrible state the two of them were in. There was dirt all over them, and the young woman's clothing even looked like there was dried blood on it! Those poor people.

"Are you alright? Do you need an ambulance?" she asked. "I don't have a phone with me right now, but..."

"It's alright. Just a few scratches." the woman with the pink hair replied. "We don't want to trouble you for long."

"Of course. Come along, my house isn't far from here. You can use my phone to call somebody."

"Thank you." the man said with a nod.

"It's no problem, young man." Eliza said, and smiled, looking at their intertwined hands. "It's nice to see that even with those l'Cie running around and terrifying everbody some young people still have the courage to enjoy life together."

The hands abruptly separated, their owners taking great care to look anywhere else but into each other's eyes.

Oh. Perhaps not a couple then. And here Eliza had always thought she was good at judging that sort of thing. She could have sworn those two were together.

Hundreds of kilometers away, aboard the proud ship Lindblum_, _a self-professed 'hero' wearing a trench coat and a bandana once again experienced a sudden and inexplicable feeling of pure dread. If it hadn't been for the fact that he was currently trying to devise a plan on how to break some of his fellow l'Cie out of imprisonment, Snow might have wondered what it could mean. But as it was, he simply did his very best to ignore it.


	15. Dine and Dash

There was no denying that Cocoon was beautiful.

Watching the sea from the small public park on the periphery of Palumpolum, Cloud could almost forget about the horrible half-dead state of this world's lifestream. At least on the surface of things, Cocoon looked like a perfectly healthy environment. There was nothing like the unnaturally sterile desert on what should have been prime arable land around Midgar, or any other signs of mako use slowly killing the planet, that had been present on Gaia. The air was clean, the soil unpolluted and covered with thriving vegetation.

There was a touch of something... artificial, perhaps. Something too perfect. Like this world wasn't the consequence of natural evolution, with all of its accompanying harshness and uncaring disinterest for the fate of individuals, but rather the result of a concerted effort to create something as close to heaven on earth as possible.

Which was exactly what Cocoon was supposed to be, of course. A perfect world under the benevolent guidance of the Cocoon fal'Cie.

There were no slums here. No myriads of people toiling as small cogs in the wheel of Shinra's machinery, always fearful of the plunge into unemployment and abject poverty that was sure to ensue if the company decided it had no more use for them. No unscrupulous mega-corporation keeping an entire world's economy prisoner and ruthlessly crushing everything that threatened their monopoly.

And for the most part it wasn't even a lie, Cloud pondered. Most people living on Cocoon seemed to live genuinely happy lives, free of destitution and too much worry. To the inhabitants of Edge, a city that had only so recently risen from the ruins of Midgar and still suffered from the effects of its legacy, it would have seemed utopian.

He heard Lightning approaching long before she reached the bench he was sitting on. Funny that, how in just a few days he'd learned to tell it was her simply by the sound of her steps.

"Any news?" she asked, sitting down besides him and putting aside the bag with supplies she'd left to gather earlier. "Or did we steal that thing for no reason after all?"

'That thing' referred to the small battery-powered smartphone in Cloud's hand. The PHS type of cellphones so common in Edge really had nothing on it. A cellphone, a radio, a mini-TV... it had everything.

And according to Lightning there probably wasn't a single person in all of Cocoon who couldn't easily afford one. The old lady who'd so generously allowed them to "borrow" some clothes that weren't totally torn up (and more importantly, weren't quite so recognizable) wouldn't even feel the loss financially. So it followed that there was no real reason not to clandestinely take it with them when they left. The damage was miniscule, and their greater need was thus sufficient justification. Cloud had taken Lightning's word for it.

He'd been watching the Sanctum's official news channel (the _only_ news channel, actually) for close to an hour now. The reports hadn't changed much, but he'd picked up some details that they'd missed earlier.

"Looks like they're still on the Palamecia. To be brought to Eden for sentencing. The Primarch himself is going to sit in judgment."

"So nothing's changed then." she said. "They're baiting us. 'Here are your friends. Come and get 'em.'"

"Yeah. You're probably right. They certainly didn't bother with a trial for the two of us. It's got to be a trap. But if they know we're alive..." he did not need to complete that sentence for Lightning to understand.

"...then why aren't our faces on posters all over the place? I know, I know. Best thing I can come up with is that they didn't get all of them."

"So it's trap, but not for us."

"Got to be. There's still no transport to Eden anyway. Everything's still under quarantine. We wouldn't even get there before it was too late." Lightning concluded, and opened the bag she'd brought along. "Want some?" she asked, offering him some of the energy bars inside.

He was hungry, so the answer to that question would have been a resounding yes. Cloud claimed a few of the bars and a bottle of water, and Lightning soon did the same. For a minute they both simply ate in what could have been comfortable silence, if it hadn't been for the gloomy thoughts on both their minds.

Cloud might have only known the other four l'Cie (that he knew of) besides him and Lightning for a very brief time, but somehow he still felt they should help their fellow fugitives if they could. And while Lightning didn't seem to want to admit it, he was pretty sure she felt the same way.

"Where did you get this food from?" he questioned, really just trying to find some random topic to serve as a distraction.

"Public food outlet." she answered. "Down by the beach."

"Wait, you bought it?" he hadn't expected that answer. Nobody used cash here, and when he had asked earlier, Lightning had responded that using her personal debit card would tip off the Sanctum faster than he could say 'proof of identity'.

"Course not. Like I just said, I got it from... right, you're not from here. Sorry, forgot about that for a moment." She finished chewing the piece of energy bar in her mouth and swallowed. "All food produced by the fal'Cie is free of charge. So are simple clothing and accommodations, medicine, and most basic necessities. You just got to pay for the fancier, human-made stuff."

"Oh."

"Serah and I used to eat this a lot back when... after our parents died when we didn't have much money." She'd told him about that when he'd asked why she'd changed her name, though she hadn't been inclined to elaborate on the details. "It's not even that bad when you get down to it. This stuff here is bland, sure. But if you have the time and can cook, you can make a good meal just from free ingredients."

"So that's what you did?"

"Err... no." Did Lightning look embarrassed? "Serah did all the cooking. I'm horrible at it. She used to say I just don't have the patience."

Was that what it meant to be 'poor' on Cocoon? Having to cook for yourself, unless you had a younger sister with a domestic side who'd do it for you? "It's all relative, isn't it? Back in the slums under the plate the poor just went hungry. Some would probably have killed to get to live in a place like this."

Lightning listened and thought about what he'd said. "There were no fal'Cie where you lived before, right?"

"No. There was Shinra though. Shinra didn't care one bit about starving children, they just cared about money and power. Why do the fal'Cie act like they care, and then pull something like the Purge?"

"I don't know." he heard her admit. "I never questioned it. Never questioned anything. I just... believed what I'd been taught. The Cocoon fal'Cie look out for us, the Pulse fal'Cie are evil, and their l'Cie are a threat to us all."

Cloud nodded. He didn't have the answer either. And to tell the truth, he'd really have prefered it if he didn't have to search for it.

Had it really been too much to ask for for this place to simply be the relative paradise it appeared to be, and nothing else? Couldn't there be at least _one_ world where life wasn't an everlasting struggle for survival for most people, with no room for happiness?

* * *

"Lt. Colonel Rosch?"

He knew that voice. Doctor Callagher, surgeon in chief at PSICOM headquarters. Yaag Rosch opened his eyes. Bright hospital lighting soon made him regret that decision, but at least he knew where he was now: Sickbay, PSICOM headquarters, lying under a regenerator unit which was currently healing his injuries.

"Ah, excellent. I thought you were waking up. How do you feel?"

"I... I'm alive. That will do for now. My men?" They'd been fighting... the l'Cie? Yes, he remembered. They'd cornered the l'Cie, and then... one of the l'Cie, Snow Villiers. He'd called them out on what they were doing, had raged against the Purge and the injustice of targeting not just l'Cie but everyone who came into contact with them. Even as Rosch had defended PSISCOM's actions, cited necessity and the safety of all Cocoon as justifications, he hadn't really believed his own words. He'd been ashamed, though he hadn't shown it. And then... then... the memories were so blurry...

"Not many survived, I'm afraid. Just three, not counting yourself. I believe..."

"RAINES!" It had been Raines! His troops who'd gunned them down without warning. Raines had betrayed them. The Cavalry had betrayed them! "RAINES, YOU DAMNED BASTARD!"

"Lt. Colonel, you need to calm down! We know what the Wide-Area Response Brigade did. Steps are being taken. You should rest now. The regenerative process is not yet complete."

"Of... of course. I apologize, Doctor." No matter the situation, it had been a stupid loss of control. "Did you recover my PADD? I'd like to review my messages while the regenerator unit does its work."

Doctor Callagher just rolled his eyes. He was quite familiar with the Lt. Colonel's habits after all. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the small tablet computer, turning it over to Rosch. "If it will keep you lying still. But don't even try to get up before you're fully healed."

Entering his password, Rosch switched on the computer and opened his mailbox. Of the people whom he'd contacted about Strife, none had responded. Nothing new about that mystery then. He almost shut the PADD down again, but then, he'd probably bore himself to death if he had nothing to do during the hours it would take the regenerator unit to repair his body.

Might as well check the rest of his messages.

As it turned out, only a single new message had arrived since he'd last checked.

From Raines.

For a few moments he felt a strong urge to just delete it and forget all about it. But that urge was completely overshadowed by his burning need to _know_, to get an explanation. Raines and he had barely known each other, and the Brigadier General was well known for his reformist views, but Rosch would never have thought the man a traitor. He opened the message, and began to read.

The contents were not what he'd expected.

Cid Raines' message to Yaag Rosch began in his typical theatrical style with a remark about terrible truth and dangerous questions. It continued with a warning that this particular information had been made electronically untraceable, and that he should expect all his other communications to be read by other people than just the people he was contacting.

And then Raines told him. Told him the horrifying, terrible truth about Dysley who was really Barthandelus, and the rest, in all it's abominable beauty. How they had all been played for fools. What the fal'Cie were planning. How Raines had been an unwilling part of that plan for decades now, and how giving Rosch this information might be his final act of rebellion before he had to play his role.

How all hope seemed lost, but one man, one l'Cie who had seemingly appeared from nowhere might be the key to stopping it all. How even Barthandelus seemed to fear that man pursuing and possibly achieving his focus.

He desperately wanted to believe it was all nothing but a lie. But... it just explained too many things. All the little hints he'd managed to collect so far, and which had only ever confused him more. It all made sense now.

"What have I done?" whispered Yaag Rosch in absolute horror.

* * *

"Still no trains running?"

Lightning just shock her head. "No trains, no airships, no normal ships, nothing. At this rate we'll be stuck here until the end of the week."

"Can't be that long." opined Cloud. "If the market is already open again..."

She shrugged. "Palumpolum's market place is famous. 'The Capital of Commerce' and all that. That's why we had so few problems finding all this stuff." she indicated the bags filled with the fruits of an afternoon spent shopping. It had taken them a few hours, but they had eventually been able to steal a debit card after they'd observed it being used to pay for a purchase. Cloud's unnaturally sharp eyes had spied the PIN number being typed, and the owner had not noticed the subsequent theft – at least not yet.

The account would probably be blocked soon, but for now they had money. They had promptly used that money to buy everything necessary to make some excellent disguises, as well as a sword for Lightning. It had been sold as an antique, but with some sharpening it would still make for a perfectly serviceable weapon.

Staying at a hotel was probably too risky though. So instead they were now looking forward to a night sleeping on hard ground, with only a bit of grass as a cushion, and one of them always keeping watch while the other slept.

Using a very specific, very liberal definition of 'look forward to', of course.

Suddenly Lightning could hear and feel her stomach rumble. They'd barely eaten anything for the last few days, and while the energy bars might not have been very tasty, they _had_ done their part to remind her that even l'Cie couldn't run on air and magic alone.

And honestly, she could really do with something that was actually tasty right now.

"Want to go grab something to eat?"

"Sure."

Thus, ten minutes later they were sitting at a table in a restaurant, having both placed orders large enough to feed normal people for a week. Which was only appropriate, after all it might well be a week or longer before they'd have a second chance to sink their teeth into some proper food.

Looking at the menu, Cloud looked like he had no idea what half the things on there actually were. He didn't let that stop him and promptly ordered a local specialty dish which Lightning knew to contain, among other things, steamed Flanitor brain and Frag Leech. She was not so cruel as to tell him that though.

Finally the food arrived. The waiter smiled at them as he put the food on the table. "Here you go. You certainly know how to celebrate. Is it because the l'Cie are finally gone? We're all relieved about that here too."

For a brief moment, Lightning and Cloud shared a quick look as if to ask 'Oh crap. What now?'. Then they both independently realized that their cover was far from blown, and there was really no reason to be so jumpy.

Naturally the waiter totally misinterpreted their brief eye contact.

"Ahh..." he stated knowingly. "I see. A pleasant evening, and enjoy your date." And with that, he was gone.

Awkward.

Silence.

"Why does everyone assume we're... you know." she asked a bit helplessly.

Cloud shrugged. "I suppose we do look the part." He had a point, she guessed. Not that she had any experience with that, she had never had any time for dates or romance. Or that much of an interest in it. Or anybody to go on a date _with_.

(Wait, had she said that aloud?)

"Yeah." Cloud responded, "Me neither. Just once."

(She had.)

"Once?" she asked, being far to embarrassed to think about where she was currently leading the conversation.

"With a friend, from Nibelheim. A couple of years after we left home."

"Nibelheim. Didn't you say..." stupid, stupid, stupid. Yes. Nibelheim had been burned to the ground. One other survivor, who had died at some point later, he had said. And she just had to bring that up. Ugh.

She apologized. "Sorry. I shouldn't have..."

Cloud didn't look angry though. Just infinitely sad. Somehow, that was worse.

"Tell me about her." Lightning suddenly demanded, looking for something, anything, to keep him from losing himself in the wrong kind of memories and getting even more depressed.

It worked. The demand... request... whatever it was, startled him from his glum thoughts by virtue of being so totally unexpected. "Tifa?" he asked. "I- I wouldn't know where to start..."

"Doesn't matter. Start anywhere."

He did. Maybe it was because he'd never had a chance before to tell anybody about Tifa like this. Maybe it was because even for all the things he and Lightning did not know about the other, even though they'd met barely a week ago, they'd relied on each other during that time on a level that made it impossible not to come to deeply trust each other. Or maybe it was just because this messed up situation the two l'Cie were in broke down barriers that would otherwise have held strong.

But in any case, soon Lightning was starting to feel as if she'd known Tifa Lockheart. Lightning had never met the woman, and never would, she had no doubt she'd have recognized her if they were to come face to face. In her acts, if perhaps not in appearance. And that total stranger whom she would never meet was nevertheless starting to feel like an old friend.

And while Cloud never outright said it, one thing was becoming blatantly clear. Tifa Lockheart could have been the love of his life, if only they'd had the chance. Lightning couldn't explain how, but she had no doubt that the two of them would have lived happily ever after – with some interruptions and imperfections perhaps, but that was only to be expected, and wouldn't have invalidated anything.

What a messed up, cruel world. And she thought she had it bad because she'd lost her sister? Hah. As if she was the only person in the world who had feelings.

"She saved me, you know. I promised to come help her out if she was ever in a bind, and I guess I did once or twice... but in the end instead it was Tifa who saved my life... my _sanity_.." he laughed a short, humorless laugh. "And she'd been dead for weeks by that point already, and I didn't even know. But that didn't stop her."

"You miss her, don't you?" Lightning asked, and it was obvious to both of them that what she really meant was that she understood perfectly, because Tifa was obviously worth being missed.

"Terribly." Cloud admitted, and it sounded both sad, and at the same time incredibly relieved at getting to say it so openly. "I don't think I'll ever be able to stop missing her."

Lightning could emphasize. She really, really could. It had been only a week since Serah had died, and she already felt like she had suffered a wound that would never heal, but only ever grow worse.

"You know, it _does_ get better with time," he said, seemingly reading her thoughts, or at least the expression on her face. "It won't ever stop hurting, but eventually the good memories will be stronger than the bad ones."

"When?"

"In my case? At the latest just now, I think. It definitely helped," he answered and smiled that slightly melancholic but honest smile she'd seen a few times now. "Your turn. Tell me about Serah."

That was only fair, she guessed. When she'd finished, she found that Cloud had been right. She _did_ feel better now. Maybe one day she'd be able to think about what had happened without wanting to forget.

Having already told each other things they'd never told anybody else, the two of them soon carried on to other topics. Like their dreams, or more lately perhaps their lack of dreams. Neither had been left with a real goal in life, but both had always hoped that things would get... _better_, somehow. It was a sentiment they could share.

So they talked, and then they talked some more about not quite so deep things, and then they noticed that their food had long since gone cold, but they didn't mind and ate it anyway. Lightning even found herself partaking of the steamed Flanitor brain without noticing at first, but when she did, she realized that she really didn't care. So what if it was disgusting? There were far more interesting things for her to think about.

It wasn't a date in the sense other people would have used the term, but that would never have worked for them anyway. And for the moment at least, the fact that the were both living with the brand of the l'Cie was something she could almost forget.

"Pardon me? Lady? Sir?" the waiter interrupted.

Lightning and Cloud both looked up from where they'd been engaged in a lively conversation about what they'd hated most about being part of the military. Only now they noticed that they were the only guests left in the restaurant.

"We're closing now, I'm afraid. It's long past midnight already."

"Of course." Lightning responded, and accepted the small hand-held device the restaurant used for payment. Fortunately she still remembered the required number.

But when she entered their stolen debit card, the device simply beeped angrily, and confiscated the rectangular piece of plastic. 'Access denied. Account blocked.' The waiter frowned, and opened his mouth to say something.

Lightning looked at Cloud, and a short, sharp nod confirmed that they were in agreement.

By the time the poor man in front of their table began to understand, the two of them were already out the door and halfway down the street. It was the perfect way to end the evening.

* * *

_**AN:** To clear up some potential misunderstandings: It's been mentioned several times by now, but yes, Tifa's dead. So is damn near everybody else from FFVII, with the exception of of Cloud and Reeve (the later only lived because he wasn't actually physically present for the final battle against Sephiroth). Cloud didn't steal Vincent's "BADASS times" during the Deepground incident, he was quite simply the only one who was available to fight Omega weapon. In fact, he's been fighting all kinds of enemies ever since the events of FFVII, at least partially because he just had nothing else left but fighting. (With Cloud's history changed so much, he never ran into Denzel)_

_I've been thinking about writing a side story about what exactly happened for some time now, but the two things that have kept me from actually doing it so far are that I'm less than confident in my ability to write good Romance/Tragedy (massive understatement), and that it would take away time I'd otherwise use to write more chapters for Reinforcements. I guess it remains to be seen if I'll ever get that particular story out of my head and onto my hard drive._

_All this isn't some random exercise in authorial sadism on my part, but rather something I consider a near necessity for this story to work the way I want it to. While I'm personally quite fine with keeping things centered on the plot and simply _not_ pairing any of the characters in a story, in this case the game itself IMHO makes it pretty clear that CloTi is canon, and I just can't imagine Cloud _not_ trying to find a way back home the entire time if he knew Tifa was waiting for him there. That was pretty much the only thing that bugged me about "The Fifth Act" by Sinnatious, which is otherwise probably the greatest FFVII fanfic ever (seriously, if you haven't already, read it now.)._


	16. The Calm before the Storm

Scrutinizing Lightning in the bright sunlight, Cloud was ultimately forced to admit that this wasn't working like he had hoped it would.

After the "date" last night, they had tried to get as much sleep as there was still time for. Which wasn't a lot, because they had then risen in the early morning hours. And now Cloud was helping Lightning prepare the disguises that would hopefully allow them to get to Eden undiscovered and with a minimum of fuss. Even if no one was currently actively looking for them, it was nevertheless quite possible, probable even, that there were watchers at airports, train stations, all the means of travel they could potentially use to get from one place to another, and that the people there had their description. And thus, the two l'Cie were now cutting hair, hiding weapons, and observing each other's mannerisms and unconscious movements while deliberating on how to best mask them.

Lightning was wearing appropriate clothing, as fashionable as it was forgettable. Her hair had been colored a light brown, and tied back into a ponytail (slightly askew due to the asymmetrical cut of her previous hairstyle). Bright red lipstick and plenty of rouge on her cheeks manipulated the observer's perception in just the right way to make her look attractive without being memorable, while brown contact lenses avoided bringing attention to her naturally ice-blue eyes. And she was clearly doing her very best to look like the harmless, slightly vapid tourist she was pretending to be.

Which was the entire problem – she was clearly doing her very best to look like the harmless, slightly vapid, tourist she was pretending to be – and it showed. Sure, she looked different, but somehow Cloud was still rather sure he'd have instantly recognized her even if he hadn't been the one helping to create the disguise.

"I don't see the problem." Lightning said, looking into a small hand-held mirror to examine herself and her disguise. "It's looks fine to me. Did they train you for this at Shinra?"

"No," he replied, wondering how she got _that_ idea. "It's... you _look_ different, but you still _act_ like yourself." No, wait, that wasn't it. "I mean, you act like yourself, trying to act like a different person."

She just looked at him in a way that was so typically Lightning, he could have identified it as belonging to her even if she had somehow been transformed into a Tonberry. Which was exactly his point. But how was he supposed to explain that?

"You're overreacting, Cloud. Just because _you_ can tell it's me, it doesn't mean everybody else can."

Or perhaps she was right, and he really was overreacting. "Alright." He sighed and nodded. "Let's move on with the plan then. My turn. Where's the hair dye?"

No reply.

For the third time today, Lightning didn't respond to one of his questions, instead simply remaining still, eyes seemingly focused on some imaginary thing only she could see. Thinking too hard again.

"Light? You alright there?"

He could see her looking up at him now, searching for words but finding none.

"You've been distracted the whole day, Light. What's on your mind?"

"I... I think we should split up." she forced out the words, completely destroying the thread of their previous conversation in that one sentence, and leaving Cloud utterly dumbstruck.

"What?"

"We should split up. Once we are in Eden, I'll draw the fal'Cies' attention. You go find the others. You already said you can feel where all the l'Cie are and that they're still alive. And that your focus is connected to all of us, not just me. So if you find them-"

"Why? What's the point? I'm not out to fulfill my focus, you know that!" he interrupted her, much more forcefully than he had intended to. Did she think he was just going to leave her to face the fal'Cie alone? Add her to the already too long list of friends he'd watched die?

He did not voice the question, did not even imply it. But he could still tell that she had at least an inkling of what he was thinking. A strangely detached part of his mind suddenly let him comprehend that after yesterday Lightning was probably the only living person in two entire worlds who might come close to understanding him. He'd allowed her a deeper glimpse into what was actually going on inside his head than anyone else ever since the days of Avalanche.

"Cloud, listen to me. I've been thinking... I've finally been thinking. And I see now what I've been doing this whole time."

The sudden realization only made it all the more important to _not_ let her join his list of dead friends.

"I was running away. I was denying reality, lying to myself. It was never meant to be more than a suicide mission. Remember when Sazh said that I was just looking for a way to die on my own terms? He was right."

"No, he wasn't." Cloud suddenly stated with absolute certainty. He'd done so on instinct, without knowing why. But now that thought about it he still felt no doubt as to the truth in his words. Why?

_Because_, he realized, _that would mean capitulation, and that's just not who she is._

"He was right," she contradicted him, keeping her voice carefully even and devoid of emotion. "There's no chance for me to get out of this alive. Even if fulfilling our focus really _does_ allow us to survive crystallization somehow, even if I _was_ willing to try and destroy Cocoon to save my own skin, even if I had any idea where to get started – there would still be no way I could win. Not against all the fal'Cie. Not against the entire military."

There was no fear in her words. He couldn't detect even the slightest trembling of her voice. Just a calm statement of fact. Cloud could feel cold sweat starting to form on his back as she continued to speak.

"But it's different for you. You're a Cocoon l'Cie. _Your_ focus might actually be something achievable."

"So you're giving up?" he asked accusingly, intentionally pushing the one button he was almost certain would produce the desired result. Those were possibly the most dishonest, least heartfelt words he had ever spoken. He had not even thought himself capable of such an act of calculated manipulation until just now. He might never be capable of it again.

"What?! NO!" she protested, sounding as offended as he had desperately hoped she would.

_Thank the Lifestream! _

"And that's why Sazh was wrong." Cloud said, looking her squarely in the eyes. "You're not giving up. You're not looking for a way to go out in a blaze of glory. Because in the end, you want to _live_."

Lightning said nothing. Apparently she didn't know how to respond to that. Good. Then he'd probably guessed right.

Lifestream, _please_ let him have guessed right.

It had hit him like a punch in the gut, but there was no denying it any longer. For three years he had lived a life of voluntary isolation, avoiding anything, anything at all, that could lead to even the flimsiest of emotional ties. Sometime during the last two weeks, that self imposed exile from other people had crumbled abruptly, and he hadn't even noticed until just now, when it was already too late. He had allowed himself to get attached. Lightning meant something to him, even if he didn't yet know precisely what.

Everyone else who had ever meant something to him was dead. _Everyone_. A painful fact, which he had only stopped being passively suicidal over perhaps half a year ago. He had finally healed, or at least had started to heal. Last night, he had even felt like he was ready to move on, at last free of the shadows of the past. The memories were still there, but just as he'd told Lightning, the good memories were now stronger than the bad ones.

And the very first thing he'd done after that, idiot that he was, was bond with someone who had at best months left to live before their mutual curse would turn her into a mindless beast. Or, more likely, someone who would get herself killed on purpose even sooner to keep just that from happening.

The only saving grace to the situation was that he probably wouldn't live much longer than that himself. Heck, if he was lucky he'd die first and thus wouldn't have to watch her die. The thought didn't scare him – he had stopped fearing death years ago. If anything, he felt like breaking out into hysterical laughter.

But Lightning had to live. She had to.

* * *

The Palamecia, flagship and pride of the Sanctum's airfleet, was no more. The l'Cie onboard, had escaped, the Primarch had been lost, the disaster was complete.

All a lie, of course. The Palamecia had never mattered, it was completely irrelevant. The l'Cie had escaped, just as planned. The Primarch wasn't dead, he had merely shed his human disguise, and Barthandelus' scheme was proceeding as intended.

Yaag Rosch had broken half a dozen regulations to get there in time. Had expended most of the bullets and every last missile his personal fighter, the Proudclad, had been loaded with in a furious attempt to make up for his mistake and bring down the airship carrying the Pulse l'Cie before they got away, to be used as pawns in the destruction of everything he held dear by Barthandelus and his co-conspirators.

He'd failed. Fate was not so easily averted, it seemed.

He'd continue to hunt them, of course. With Strife gone, stopping the remaining l'Cie was the only hope he had left. Sazh Katzroy, Snow Villiers, Hope Estheim, Oerba Dia Vanille, Oerba Yun Fang. Rosch no longer had any illusions about what he was doing – the l'Cie were people, not monsters, and essentially innocents. But they were also the tool the fal'Cie would wield to destroy Cocoon, and he needed to deny them that tool.

He'd returned to PSICOM headquarters as quickly as he could. As he entered the command center, he was already planning his next steps. And just as importantly, how to hide them from the fal'Cie, lest he be found out and eliminated before he could stop the danger to Cocoon.

He had barely entered the command center, when he was approached by Lieutenant Haldich, one of the men under his command. "Lt. Colonel! We've been looking for you for hours. It's the l'Cie..."

"I know, Lieutenant," he responded, sounding as tired as he felt "the Palamecia was destroyed and the l'Cie have escaped."

"No, that's not what I meant..." Rosch frowned at hearing that. More bad news? As if things weren't bad enough already. "...it's the _other_ l'Cie. Strife and Farron."

"You found the bodies?" he asked, trying not to loudly and melodramatically curse himself for his grand mistake.

"No, sir." the man responded, and continued with the fearful air of a messenger bringing very bad news indeed and possibly expecting to be shot for it. "We found a tunnel. There was a tunnel from where we believed they had been buried leading straight into Gapra Whitewood."

And just like that, the Lieutenant had his superior's complete and undivided attention.

"It get's worse, sir. There were no bodies. Not even one. There was blood, which has been identified as Farron's, but no body. They both got awa-."

"To where?" Rosch's stare seemed to bore straight through Lieutenant Haldich eyes and into the back of his skull. Swallowing hard, the man continued.

"Palumpolum. At least we think so."

"Does the Primarch know?"

"Yes, sir. He did, We informed him less than an hour before the attack on the Palamecia. All available PSICOM units have been ordered into action. The airborne battalion is on it's way, and Palumpolum's Guardian Corps units are being mobilized."

"Who's in command?"

"Lieutenant Colonel Jihl Nabaat. She was on board the Palamecia when we informed the Primarch, and he ordered her to..."

Yaag Rosch never got to hear the end of that sentence. By the time the Lieutenant stopped speaking, he was already sprinting out of the command center at full speed.

There was no time to loose.

* * *

By late afternoon they were both sitting in their seats and waiting for the train to depart, finally bringing them closer to their destination. Those were comfortable seats, in a comfortable train compartment, and yet Lightning was not in the least comfortable.

_'Because in the end, you want to live.'_

Was it true? Things had seemed so clear this morning when she'd lain awake, trying to decide what to do. Survival was an impossibility, and when she'd finally found the courage to just stop running for a moment and _think,_ revenge had quickly been exposed to her for what it was: An ultimately meaningless gesture, and a way to try and escape from reality by loosing herself in the fight. Her own, personal brand of cowardice in lieu of the more traditional kind. But then she'd found that there was another valid goal to strive for, something else worth doing that would keep away despair.

Go to Eden, find out where the other l'Cie were imprisoned. Then infiltrate Edenhall itself. Finally, make as much of a mess as possible. The Sanctum would panic. A Pulse l'Cie possibly attacking the beating heart of Cocoon? Every military force available would be called in to try and stop her. The fact that she had no intention of actually causing Cocoon's fall, even if she had been capable of such an act, would not matter in the slightest.

And in that chaos, no one would worry about the other l'Cie, the ones already imprisoned and awaiting execution. Cloud should be able to do with relative ease what would otherwise have been an impossibility and break them out. With a greater number of l'Cie connected to his focus around, and the Sanctum distracted, Cloud would have a chance. He could figure out his focus, fulfill it, and hopefully survive whatever came afterward. Maybe save Cocoon too, while he was at it. That was, after all, the ultimate purpose beyond the focuses of all Cocoon l'Cie.

Cloud had wanted to hear nothing of it. He barely even seemed interested in finding his focus and saving his own life. 'Fighting without hope is no way to live.' she had argued, completely neglecting to mention that she had no hope for herself whatsoever. But no hope for herself was still not the same as no hope at all.

And besides, what she wanted and what was going to happen were two very different things. Regardless, almost anything would be preferable to turning Cie'th.

So if she was going to die, why not die doing something she believed in? That was the thing farthest from giving up she could do under the circumstances. It certainly wasn't ideal, but...

From the corner of her eye, she watched Cloud sitting on the seat opposite to her own. He deserved better than this fate. Giving him a chance to survive and regain his freedom wouldn't help her save herself, but it would _mean_ something. Apart from Serah, there were few other people that Lightning had ever felt any kind of connection with.

Thinking of Serah immediately brought to mind the regrets she had about how completely she had failed her during the last few days of her life. Regrets, Lightning had learned, were something incredibly frustrating. It was all in the past, after all. No matter how much she yearned to change that past, it was simply impossible.

No, she wasn't entirely sure if she still wanted to live. It was mostly an academic question anyway, as stark reality wouldn't particularly care about her personal opinion on the issue. But if there was one thing that she was quite certain about, it was that she wanted at least Cloud to live, even if she herself couldn't. And no more regrets in addition to the ones she already had.

The train finally started moving, slowly at first, and Lightning could hear the other passengers in the compartment banter with each other as their journey began. She looked out the window, and took in the sight of the city's beautiful architecture for what would probably be the last time.

Then she threw herself to the the floor as combat instincts trained to the sharpness of a knife's edge took over, mere fractions of a second before the heavy large caliber bullet moving at supersonic speeds passed through the space where her head had been just a moment ago.

And soon all hell broke loose in the passenger car that had been about to leave Palumpolum with the two l'Cie inside it.

* * *

_**AN:** There. That's enough drama for now. This chapter was rather hard to write, and I'm looking forward to writing some action and plot progression again._

_The first of which I can promise there will be plenty of in the coming chapters._


	17. Never Interrupt your Enemy

The bullets ripped through the thin aluminum walls of the passenger car with almost contemptuous ease. Most of the passengers hit didn't even have time to scream. It was brutal, it was carnage, and it was completely ineffective at actually killing the two people who had been the intended victims.

"Targets missed. Repeat!"

By the time the soldier at the tripod mounted heavy machine gun realized that his spotter was right, and the salvo had missed entirely, the two l'Cie were already out the window on the car's other side. He didn't let that stop him, and immediately pulled the trigger again, hoping to score hits _through_ the rail car.

He never got the chance to fire a third salvo. Without warning, the soldier, his spotter, and the heavy machine gun vanished in a fiery blaze, as Cloud delivered what back home would have been considered a ludicrously overpowered Firaga spell at obscene range. Two of their squadmates were also caught in the inferno.

Then three additional heavy machine gun positions opened fire, shooting blindly at where they suspected the l'Cie were. Skytanks moved into position in the distance, preparing to bombard the entire area. And inside what was left of the rail car, the passengers who were still alive began to understand what was happening, and screams filled with disbelief, grief, shock and pain could be heard.

Cloud shared a quick glance with Lightning, and her expression told him that there was no need for words. The proper course of action was as obvious to her as it was to him.

Dodging and deflecting the hail of bullets being sent their way, the two l'Cie made a break for the nearest group of buildings that could serve as cover. Hopefully without putting more innocent bystanders into the line of fire.

* * *

Aboard the PSICOM airborne battalion's flying command vehicle, Lieutenant Colonel Jihl Nabaat cursed. Loudly.

"**You fools!** You were supposed to shoot them! Not shoot everyone else on the train, _except_ for the l'Cie."

Even so, she quietly had to admit to herself that it was partially her own fault. She had merely scoffed when Rosch, in his after action report, had recommended relying on carpet bombing and heavy artillery to deal with the enemy. He furthermore advised never to engage l'Cie with infantry in close-quarters, especially not in an environment with plenty of cover or civilians around.

Absurd! What did Rosch know anyway? He hadn't even been capable of dealing with these two l'Cie here. She, by comparison, had successfully captured two of the fugitives in Nautilus and then cleverly used them to lure the rest into a trap.

(Said trap had then failed catastrophically, resulting in the l'Cie's escape, as well as the loss of both the Palamecia and Primarch Dysley. A fact of which Lieutenant Colonel Jihl Nabaat remained blissfully ignorant for now.)

Still, maybe she _should_ have ordered the entire train bombed into scrap metal from the air. It never hurt to be thorough, after all. Oh well, there was no helping it. She could hardly back down now, it would irreparably damage her credibility. She hardened her voice, and gave the order.

"New directives for companies Gamma through Zeta: Advance into the combat zone, engage and terminate the l'Cie."

"A... acknowledged."

Quantity had a quality all its own, and if there was one thing she was certain of, it was that even the l'Cie wouldn't stand a chance against more than 400 soldiers.

* * *

"This doesn't make any sense!" shouted Lightning as the two of them decimated another squad of PSICOM infantry in Palumpolum's narrow streets. "They're just feeding people into the meatgrinder." she said, sounding almost offended.

Cloud honestly had to agree. Between the two of them, they had to have caused at least three score casualties already, and PSICOM just kept sending their soldiers to die on their swords. No tanks, no artillery, no bombs, not even properly positioned infantry support weapons after the first four machine guns that had opened fire on the train. It was as if whoever was in command on the other side was either incompetent or wasn't actually trying to kill them.

Having finished off his last opponent, he darted into a nearby alley. Lightning followed without hesitation, obviously trusting him to know where he was going.

In truth, he had no clue whatsoever. But the Lifestream was poking him with his sixth sense again, and he didn't really have any better ideas than follow the itch. Maybe it would lead them somewhere useful.

Minutes passed as they made their way through Palumpolum's labyrinthine streets, plazas, and public parks. The city really was beautiful. But today that beauty was soiled with blood, as more and more of PSICOM units arrived piecemeal, to face the l'Cie in small groups, one at a time, and be slaughtered like cattle.

From a tactical perspective it was perfect. That didn't make it any less sickening. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see a group of panicked bystanders flee, trying to get away from the terror that were the l'Cie. He was just glad that most people who lived here seemed to have found refuge inside their homes.

"Cloud! PSICOM squad at 4 o'clock."

He didn't verbally respond, instead carefully but quickly taking aim with his magic and unleashing a razor wind that maimed two thirds of the squad before they even knew what was happening. Two of the soldiers had just barely managed to react in time and sent some bullets his way, but none made it past Lightning's sword defending him and deflecting the projectiles while he cast the spell. The two l'Cie then proceeded to slay the remaining soldiers without incident.

One ran. They let him go.

"Where to now?" asked Lightning.

"Not sure. Underground, I think. That's were the Lifestream is pointing me to."

"Pointing...?"

"I'll explain later." He replied, and headed towards something that was probably meant to be a large freight elevator.

Two and a half minutes later they were inside some kind of artificial cavern. A truly massive cavern at that. Large and high enough to fit small skyscrapers inside. Floating platforms and walkways up high in the air allowed for transportation, and Cloud could make out large basins filled with fluid at the bottom. It looked like some sort of aquaculture.

"The Palumpolum Nutriculture." Lightning said. "This is were the food you can get at the public outlets is made."

"It's... massive." Just how much food could this place produce?

"Yeah."

"There's a Sanctum fal'Cie down here, isn't there?" he asked. By now he was pretty sure that was where the Lifestream wanted him to go.

"I think so. Carbio... Carbuncle, or something like that."

They ran into some monsters on the way to the fal'Cie. Nothing noteworthy, just a few Flanitors and a Lucidon, all of which were swiftly dispatched. A sinking feeling began to make itself known in Cloud's stomach. He could think of at least one very specific reason why monsters might appear within an artificial structure, and it was nothing good.

Then they reached the fal'Cie.

Carbuncle was beautiful. There was no other way to describe the non-humanoid fal'Cie. This was not a creature meant for battle, or interaction with humans. A large central prism made out of a crystal the size of a small house formed the center of its body, and two butterfly-like wings adorned the creature's sides, slowly circling around the central structure. Their outer edges were shaped like faces, serenely looking into the distance as the fal'Cie floated in the air above the massive nutriculture complex and bathed everything in a warm, life-giving golden glow.

And in a small bag fastened to Cloud's belt, carefully secured to make sure it couldn't be lost, the materia he had picked up in the tunnel to Gapra Whitewood suddenly went active.

Slipping his hand inside the bag and grasping the materia, he could feel the familiar tingle of free, unchained lifestream. Not refined mako, cleansed and purged and abused until it was nothing but an energy source for Shinra's reactors, no. This was _lifestream_.

Pulling out the materia, Cloud let its energy flow. Immediately he could feel the blossoming force inside the materia reach out to the lifestream filling the all around space around it. And just as quickly he could feel it being constrained, strangled, constricted and frozen by the fal'Cie's golden light.

Then he understood.

"I should have known!" he hissed from somewhere between his teeth, and followed up with some uncharacteristically fierce cursing directed at the fal'Cie. "I should have noticed it the first time I saw one of them. Damnit, I should have known!"

"What?" Asked Lightning, sounding honestly confused.

"Those damn things are powered by mako!"

* * *

"Incoming priority call. It's Lieutenant Colonel Rosch." reported the officer in charge of communications, his voice shaky.

Jihl Nabaat nearly growled. Could this situation get any worse? Casualty report after casualty report, failure after failure, and by all accounts they hadn't put so much as a scratch on the l'Cie. How many more humiliations would she have to tolerate because these _imbeciles_ under her command couldn't deal with two fugitives? And now Rosch, of all people, had to get involved as well...

"Ma'am? Lieutenant Colonel Rosch is on the line. He says it's an emergency and concerns the l'Cie."

"Put him through." she replied, struggling to maintain her composure.

"Colonel?" Rosch's face appeared on the screen before her. "I have new information that changes everything. You need to call off the attack on the l'Cie. Right now."

"Call off the attack? Rosch, have you gone completely mad? The l'Cie are to be executed, without mercy! My orders come from the Primarch himself." she left unsaid the fact that her attack was not exactly proceeding as planned.

"The Primarch is dead!" Rosch exclaimed, obviously getting desperate. "Colonel... Jihl... please _listen to me_! I'll explain everything as soon as I can. Just call off the attack!"

"You've lost your mind." She coldly replied. The Primarch couldn't be dead. The Primarch was... he was... the Primarch! The leader of all Cocoon. He couldn't die. It just wasn't possible.

Still, for a brief moment she considered the possibility that Rosch might be right. What if Primarch Dysley really was dead? What if there really was a valid reason to stop the execution of the l'Cie? Nobody would be able to blame her for what had happened so far then...

Before she could continue thinking along those lines, a new alarm suddenly blared through the mobile command center.

"Colonel." the Lieutenant's face was pale as death. "We just got an update from Palumpolum's surveillance net. Delta company confirms that the l'Cie have broken through into the nutriculture complex. The fal'Cie Carbuncle has been killed. We... we've failed."

Jihl Nabaat's mind came to a sudden stop. A fal'Cie had been killed. A fal'Cie had been _killed_. A fal'Cie had been killed _while she was in command of the operation to defend it_. This was a disaster.

The l'Cie needed to die. _Now_. Or her career was over. Worse, she might even be court martialed.

"Last known location of the l'Cie?" She asked, no, _demanded_ to know.

"The l'Cie... Delta company confirms that they believe the l'Cie to be somewhere inside the nutriculture complex. They're looking for them now."

"Nevermind that." It wouldn't matter in a few minutes. "Contact Eta company. Tell them to open fire." Maybe Rosch had been right about one thing: This was a task for the artillery.

"Ma'am?" the Lieutenant answered, disbelief in his voice. "Our own people are still insi-"

"Do it!" she commanded. "And call the bombers. Tell them to drop their entire payload on the nutriculture complex. That's an order!"

The officer froze. She physically dragged him from his seat and gave the orders herself.

On the screen in front of her command console, she could see Rosch stare at her in disbelief. He opened his mouth to say something.

She terminated the connection.

* * *

At first Lightning thought it was an earthquake.

They'd been making their way out of the nutriculture complex after Cloud had dispatched the defenseless Sanctum fal'Cie with some kind of laser beam from his sword - Lightning didn't even want to speculate about how the heck _that_ worked.

Before they'd left the scene of the crime, Cloud had done... _something_ with that materia he had held in his left hand. She had no idea what exactly, but it was undeniable that something had changed, some immaterial quality in the very fabric of the world that surrounded her. It was difficult to define, and if she hadn't been there to witness the change she might never have noticed the difference. It was as if she'd lived her whole life in black and white, and now suddenly there was _color_, and she simply had no words to describe it because just a minute before she hadn't even understood the basic concept of color.

Regardless, her metaphysical musings had soon been forced aside, as the two of them once more fought, and sliced, and blasted their way through yet more PSICOM troops. This time to find a way to the outside, rather than get in.

And then the ground started shaking.

"Light? Was that what I think it was?" Cloud asked.

She knew what it was. And it wasn't good. Though it was muffled by the heavy ceiling above them, Lightning still recognized the report of heavy skytank artillery firing almost nonstop.

"They're shelling the city." she quietly said, oddly detached and astonished at the shock she heard in her own voice. "They're really shelling the city. There's thousands of people up there, hundreds of their own soldiers, and they're shelling the city."

* * *

_**AN:**__ It's been almost a year since I began writing this story. It was fun, and then eventually I lost interest and stopped. And now, one year later, here I am, looking up my old stuff for nostalgia's sake, and expecting it to have been buried and forgotten long ago._

_And what do I find instead? A good dozen new comments, some of them quite sophisticated, force-feeding me new motivation like fatty food. You are all such cruel, cruel people. ;)_

_Very well. It appears I have no choice. Time to finish what I started._


End file.
